Tf\e Winin/iMg of Thje Soul 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS^ 

fc^W 



THE 

WINNING OF THE SOUL 
3nt) <&t\)tt Sermons 



THE 

Winning of the Soul 




LEIGHTON PARKS 

RECTOR OF EMMANUEL CHURCH, BOSTON 




NEW YORK 
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY 

31 West Twenty-Third Street 

1893 



The Library 
of Congress 

washington 



Copyright, 1893, 
By E. P. Dutton and Company. 



John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



2To tfje JHemorg 

OF 

PHILLIPS BROOKS, 

THE ILLUSTRIOUS PREACHER, THE NOBLE BISHOP, 
THE GREAT-HEARTED FRIEND, THE MAN OF GOD, 

THIS VOLUME 

( The title of which he chose) 

IS, WITH LOVING REVERENCE, 
DEDICATED. 



CONTENTS. 



SERMON PAGE 

I. The Winning of the Soul 1 

II. The Potter's Wheel ........ 14 

III. The Killing of the Son 34 

IV. Revelation 51 

V. The Ministry of the Church 63 

VI. A Christmas Sermon 76 

VII. The Mirage a Reality 85 

VIII. Seeing the Invisible 102 

IX. Gambling 122 

X. The Newspaper 136 

XI. The Double Crucifixion 152 

XII. The Naturalness of the Resurrection . 166 

XIII. The New Birth 177 

XIV. The Sufficiency of Evil 190 

XV. The Soul's Refuge 201 

XVI. The Arrow of the Lord's Deliverance . 217 

XVII. The Power of the Obvious ...... 230 

XVIII. All Souls Day 242 

XIX. Phillips Brooks : The Love of God and 

the Service of Man 259 

XX. Phillips Brooks : The Portion of the 

First-Born 271 



I. 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 

In your patience ye shall win your souls. 

St. Luke, xxi. 19. 

TN the words which precede our text Jesus has 
been pointing out to the disciples what they must 
expect to endure. Indeed, in all his dealings with his 
disciples he never failed to point out to them that the 
Christian life did not mean escape from the losses, the 
perplexities, the trials, and the sorrows that were to 
be found in the world at large. All that He said 
was, that out of that sorrow there should come a joy 
which no man could take from the loving soul, and 
that in the midst of it we shall by patience win our 
souls. 

The expression is a striking one, — much more 
forcible than that with which we are familiar in our 
King James version of the Bible, where it says, " In 
your patience possess ye your souls." Here we are 
told that by patience we shall win our souls, so put- 
ting before us at once the meaning of life as a 

1 



2 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 



struggle, and also the end and object of life, the true 
prize after which men should reach. 

And does not that bring our Christian life, my 
friends, into harmony with what we are learning every 
day about the mystery of life wherever it is mani- 
fested on our planet ? Every tree that to-day is put- 
ting forth its leaves anew, every flower that to-day 
opens its calyx with new beauty that it may refresh 
the heart of man, has passed through a great struggle 
of which we think but little, and yet a struggle which 
began at the very moment the seed was planted in the 
ground. The meaning of the fruit upon the tree in 
its season, and the meaning of the flower upon the 
stem in its appointed hour, is the victory in the long 
battle for life, so that every flower that we shall pass 
on our homeward way to-day is saying to us, if we can 
only understand its meaning, " In my patience I have 
won my life." 

It brings, I say, the Christian life into harmony 
with the meaning of life wherever we find it. Life is 
a long struggle, and that which, as we say, survives, 
is the particular manifestation of life which has won 
itself in the struggle for existence. I think it is well 
for us to look at this aspect of our Christian life 
from time to time, because there are so many different 
theories about the meaning and object of religion. 

Men often think about religion very much as they 
think about a fortune. There are some men who 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 3 



labor day by day, not because they love work, but 
because they fear the penalty of idleness. It is the 
spur of want that drives them to labor. So there 
are Christians who think of religion as a thing that 
it is desirable for them to participate in, not because 
they love it, but because they are afraid if they neg- 
lect it some penalty of awful punishment will fall 
upon them some day beyond the grave. That is the 
lowest form of looking upon work, or of looking at 
religion ; and yet, just as we would all say that it is 
better for a man to go to his labor day after day, 
driven by the goad of want, rather than to live in 
idleness, so we say it is better for a man to lead an 
upright life driven there by fear than not to live an 
upright life at all, because it is always something for 
a man to form good habits, even if the motive that led 
him to those habits be not the highest. 

Or, again, there are men who work day by day, not 
because they are driven by the fear of want, but be- 
cause they love the wages that they receive. That is 
a higher form than the other, and yet it is not the 
highest. And so there are men in the Church, who 
are living what they call a religious life, who are up- 
right, who are denying themselves now, who are fol- 
lowing a certain course that is supposed to be safe, 
the object they have in mind being to get a reward 
some time hereafter. Some day they hope that God 
will pay them for all that they have given up for his 



4 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 



sake ; they dream of standing some day in heaven and 
hearing God say to them, " You gave up a great deal 
for me. I understood that you did not love me, that 
it was no pleasure for you to commune with me in 
prayer, that you hated to go to church, but inasmuch 
as you have been a religious man, I will now reward 
you by giving you a place in the kingdom, where you 
can do your own pleasure throughout all eternity." 
Now that also is not a very high notion of religion, 
and yet we say again that it is better for a man to 
conform to those standards that the Church has found 
by long experience to be helpful to the soul, even 
though he have no higher notion than to be paid by 
God for doing his duty, than not to conform, and to 
be careless and indifferent, because he is always in an 
atmosphere where it is possible for him to feel the in- 
fluence of a nobler and better life. 

And lastly, just as there are men who are no longer 
driven to their work by any fear of want, and who 
have passed far beyond the position where their work 
can be estimated and paid for by wages, but who do 
their work simply and solely because they know that 
in so doing they are fulfilling themselves, developing 
themselves to the highest degree possible, and so love 
and rejoice in their work without any thought of fear 
or favor, — so there are men who are leading a reli- 
gious life without the fear of hell to deter them, with- 
out the promise of heaven to pay them, but because 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 



5 



they have come to love the character of the Lord 
Jesus Christ, and desire to attain unto that charac- 
ter, at least in part, before their days are ended. And 
that, my friends, is the highest and noblest thought 
that a man can have of religion. 

And yet there are men who say, Is not that a sub- 
tle form of selfishness ? When we say that the ob- 
ject of our life is to make the most of ourselves, to be 
the best we know how to be, are we not then really 
selfish ? Now of course it is difficult to answer such 
a question as that, because we are using the word 
u self " in two senses. And in order to clear our 
minds of that sophistry which 1 know perplexes cer- 
tain among you here, it is desirable for us to ask 
ourselves what we mean when we speak of self. 

There is in every one of us a double self. There 
is a self that belongs to the animal nature, out of 
which we have been drawn by this long process 
which we call creation, or evolution. And, on the 
other hand, there is in every one of us that higher, 
nobler self which is allied to God, that reaches up to 
God, that finds its joy in communion with God. Now, 
then, any man who sacrifices that higher nature which 
speaks to him through the voice of duty, and yields 
to the pleasures of life that manifest themselves in 
his lower nature, is a selfish man. The man who will 
sacrifice his friend, his family, everything that ought 



6 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 



to appeal to his higher nature, — country, duty, con- 
science, — for the pleasure of the moment, to increase 
the satisfaction of his lower nature, is a selfish man ; 
and so too the man who is always on a lookout for the 
things that will please that lower nature is essentially 
selfish, even though he be not conscious of wrong- 
doing. But when we speak of a man's devoting the 
energy of his life to the enlargement and the deepen- 
ing and the heightening of that nobler self within 
him which is allied to God, we cannot, without a mis- 
use of words, speak of that as selfish ; for while it 
is a part of self, it is far more a part of God, and the 
man who is trying to do his duty and to make the 
most of himself is really drawing nearer and nearer 
to that point of which St. Paul speaks as the summit 
of human endeavor, when a man can say, " I, this 
old self, am dead, and my life, my higher self, is hid 
with Christ in God." To have the vision of the per- 
fect life as revealed in Jesus Christ, and to draw near 
to that life and make it one's own, is what I think 
Jesus meant when He spoke of winning the soul, of 
laying hold of the true life that belongs to every one 
of us, but which no one of us has really and alto- 
gether possessed. 

And now we have to ask ourselves, If this be true, 
what is the process by which the result desired is 
reached ? And here we have the story of the Gospel 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 



7 



to help us. That story that tells us that man does 
not have to climb up into heaven to win God, but that 
God has descended to human life ; that every hu- 
man life belongs to God, and from the very moment 
the child is born the Spirit of God is resting upon 
it, striving to make it more and more like Jesus 
Christ. If the story of that Gospel be true, we can 
understand why Christ laid such emphasis upon pa- 
tience, — u In your patience ye shall win your souls," — 
because all that the soul has to do for its salvation is 
to rest patiently in the midst of the perplexities and 
sorrows and trials of life, and allow the Spirit of God 
to incarnate itself in it, according to its capacity to 
receive it, as the Divine life was incarnated in Jesus 
in the perfection in which humanity can receive it. 
For God is striving with us every day to bring us to 
the knowledge of Himself as revealed in Jesus Christ, 
that we seeing that life in Jesus Christ may think of 
it, not as an exceptional life that has burst in upon 
humanity, but may think of it as the normal life, the 
life that God in his creation of humanity intended 
and desired every man, according to his capacity, and 
according to the circumstances of his time, to live. 
And so we win that life as the artist wins his picture. 
He has a vision, and yet it is dim and uncertain, but 
by patience, by waiting, by allowing the vision to de- 
scend until it fills his being, little by little he is able 
to express it in some outward form, and in that day 



8 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 



the artist has won his picture. The picture was float- 
ing before him as a cloud, that sometimes seemed to 
take shape and then again melted into thin air ; but 
at last by patient waiting the vision descended, incar- 
nated itself in the man's life, and he was able to ex- 
press it, and then, but not until then, the picture 
was his. 

Now I ask you, for a moment, to turn with me to 
certain illustrations of this truth that perhaps will be 
helpful to us in our daily lives. 

Look first for a moment at the sorrows of life. We 
all know, when sorrows come upon us, that what we 
wish is comfort, — the comfort of God. And nothing 
is more common in such an hour than for people to 
be surprised that the comfort of God does not come 
instantly after the sorrow has fallen upon them. It 
is one of the great perplexities of life. It causes so 
much unhappiness. Men and women that have served 
God and loved God, and lived the Christian life, are 
compassed about with sorrow. Then they expect to 
know the comfort of God at once, and sometimes it is 
so, but not often. Now, why is it ? Is it not this, my 
friends, — that if what we have said before is true, if 
God is incarnating himself in the life of every one of 
us, then the Divine life must, in order for that incarna- 
tion, subject itself to the laws and conditions of human 
life, one of which is time ? We might as well ask why, 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 



9 



if in Jesus " dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bod- 
ily," He did not, when He lay in his mother's arms a 
little child, speak as a man, work miracles with those 
baby fingers, and convert the world by the shining 
out of the Divine effulgence from his infant face. It 
was because it was a true Incarnation. It was not an 
Avatar, a sudden descent of God into some particular 
vessel of mankind, in order that the Divine power 
might for a moment be seen, startling and terrifying 
humanity. No, it was an Incarnation, a participa- 
tion in human life by the Divine life, and it expanded 
as Jesus " increased in wisdom and stature, and in 
favor with God and man." Now, if the incarnation 
of Jesus required time to work out to the full the 
meaning of God in man, how much more must it be 
so with you and me. If we can be patient, if we can 
wait, if we can hold back the rash judgment that as- 
cends the throne and condemns God without a hear- 
ing, if we can rest until the voice of God can be 
heard upon the dull ear, then in our patience we shall 
win our souls; we shall know the comfort of God, 
which is the power and glory of human life. 

Or, again, in the trials of life how hard it is to 
be patient, to wait. How hard it is to believe that 
those who trouble and perplex our lives can have any 
good in them. We make a great resolution, we say, 
"I will live differently in my family, I will behave 
towards those who perplex and trouble me in a dif- 



10 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 



ferent way from that in which I behaved before " ; 
and then in a moment the good resolution is shat- 
tered, because we cannot believe that there is any 
good in a life that perplexes us, and the subtle sug- 
gestion of the tempter is heard, saying, " Did not 
God make me to fulfil my life ? Why should I 
alone of all God's creatures suffer and be disregarded 
and despised ? Why should I alone be cut off from 
happiness and joy and the fulfilment of the best that 
is in me ? Why should I submit when submission 
seems to have no outlet, when submission will do 
no good, so far as I can see, to any other soul ? 
Why should not I be free to live my life as it seems 
best to me to live it, and to make the most of 
myself, which I believe God desires ? " Ay, God 
desires us to make the most of ourselves. God de- 
sires us to win our souls, to lay hold upon the Divine 
life. But it is not by disregarding the duties of life, 
it is not by setting ourselves free from the trammels 
that seem to prevent a larger liberty, it is not by 
taking life into one's own hand, that the true life of 
the soul is to be won. It is in the patience that waits 
upon the Lord. When you hear the voice saying, Lo, 
your true life is here, or it is there, believe it not. It 
is in the midst of your trials ; for wherever there is 
room for sacrifice, there is room for God. 

Lastly, it is true of those perplexities that arise 
about the knowledge of God. A man or woman has 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 11 



passed on through childhood and early youth without 
any thought of God or his revelation in nature, or 
in the Bible, or in the spirit of man, and at last the 
soul becomes conscious that it holds relation to 
Something that it does not see, nor touch, nor hear. 
" Now, then," says the soul, " why is it, if there be 
any reality answering to this suspicion of my nature 
that there is a God, — why is it that instantly my 
soul is not filled with the absolute certainty of the 
existence of God, and the joy that should flow from 
communion with Him ? " Sometimes it is suggested 
to such a soul that God is angry, — that because it 
has neglected God, now God will neglect it. That is 
heathenism ; no matter who says it, or where it is 
said, it is heathenism. God is our Father, and the 
very instant that we turn to Him, He will reveal 
Himself to us to the utmost of our capacity to re- 
ceive Him. But it is not strange that the arm that 
has lain long unused in sickness and at last lifts it- 
self up and tries to grasp one of the many handles 
of life, should find that the fingers tremble and the 
grasp is infirm. Nor is it strange that the soul that 
has not known God in early childhood and in the 
glow of youth should find that it takes time to enter 
into intimacy with God, just as it takes time to enter 
into the deepest and truest intimacy with a noble hu- 
man soul. But if we will be patient, if we will wait 
upon the Lord, then, my friends, we shall win that 



12 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 



knowledge of God which is the life and the joy of 
the soul. 

Can we not see, then, what it is that Jesus is trying 
to say to us ? It is that life is one long struggle, and 
that we need not suppose that happiness, peace, and 
joy are to come instantly upon our life. No, life is 
one long struggle, and the end and object of it is to 
win the character of Jesus Christ. That is not to 
dress like Jesus Christ, nor to try to look like Jesus 
Christ, nor to speak his words or to eat and drink 
and live as He lived. Not so ; but to incarnate in 
our own life, in the school, in the business, in the 
home, in the church, everywhere, the same Divine 
Spirit that made Jesus the glory and the beauty and 
the power of mankind. That is the end and object 
of life. It is not to gain more money than our neigh- 
bors ; it is not to have larger knowledge than our 
neighbors ; it is not to receive the applause of the 
multitude ; it is to win our souls, and that is to win 
God. 

And if we once set that before us, then go on to 
the second point, and remember that God is to be 
won, in comfort, and in knowledge, and in the power 
for sacrifice, only by patience. If we take that view 
of life, my friends, and set before us the true object 
of life, the winning of a soul, and determine that 



THE WINNING OF THE SOUL. 



13 



that soul shall be won in the patience that waits for 
the power of God to manifest itself in our lives, we 
shall have a clew that will lead us through the dark- 
ness of sorrow, and through the agony of sacrifice, 
and through the mystery of learning, until we hear 
that word which will be the announcement of no 
outward reward, but simply the acknowledgment of 
a life that has won itself : " Well done, good and 
faithful servant ; you have endured to the end and 
are saved. To him that overcometh will I grant to 
sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, 
and am set down with my Father in his throne. " 



II. 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 

The word which came to Jeremiah from the Lord, say- 
ing, Arise, and go down to the potter 's house, and there I 
will cause thee to hear my ivords. Then I went down to 
the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the 
wheels. — Jeremiah, xviii. 1-3. 

THE potter's house has been used as a parable for 
more than three thousand years. It had been 
used in Egypt long before Jeremiah, and it was used 
in Persia long after him ; it was revived by St. Paul, 
and it is in the poetry of to-day. The word of the 
Lord which came to the prophet through the consid- 
eration of that simple scene was sufficient to suggest 
the answer to the problem of his day. The prophet 
went into the potter's house perplexed about a prob- 
lem that has largely lost interest for us, first, because 
we have become familiar with the answer to it, and 
secondly, because that answer only prepared the way 
for the entrance of another problem to the solution of 
which no man can be indifferent. 

Does God rule the nations of the earth ? When men 
set themselves in opposition to what are believed to be 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



15 



the laws of righteousness, will the nation prosper as 
it would have done if righteousness had been its aim ? 
That was the question which perplexed the prophet. 
But when he looked on the potter and saw him work on 
the wheels, saw him fashion a vessel, and then noted 
that, when the vessel proved unfit for the use to which 
it was designed, it was broken and the fragments 
mixed with new clay to make another vessel, he rose 
to the thought of God, and became convinced that 
God does the same. If the nation which he has 
chosen does not show itself fitted for the work, it is 
broken and mingled with another, and out of the 
conglomerate the needed form is made. God's work, 
he believed, was not frustrated by man's sin, only the 
nation which set itself against God was broken. 

I say that we have nowadays but slight interest in 
that problem, for we are perplexed by a deeper. This 
one concerns the individual soul. The interest in 
the individual arose in history, we may say, with the 
introduction of the religion of Jesus. It was ob- 
scured and came to the front again at the Reforma- 
tion, was again obscured by the shadow of dogmatism 
and the rise of modern nationalities, but it broke out 
with fearful signs in the French Revolution, and is 
to-day the only question which really interests man. 
Does God deal with the individual soul, and if so how ? 
Can we answer these questions ? Not as we might 



16 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



wish, perhaps, but in part at least. The parable of 
the potter's house has not exhausted its significance. 
Let us too arise and go down into his house to-day. 
It may be that there the Lord will cause us to hear 
his words. 

Somehow the human mind came to suspect that each 
man was in direct and intimate relationship with God, 
that he was dealing with him as truly as if there were 
no other being in the universe. Every word of Jesus 
tended to deepen that impression. He used strong 
words to express his own confidence in this belief: 
" The very hairs of your head are all numbered. . . . Not 
one sparrow falleth to the ground without your Heav- 
enly Father. Are ye not of more value than they ? " 
As long as the human mind was childlike, that is to 
say, as long as it received simple impressions without 
trying to analyze their origin or the laws of their ac- 
tion, doubt did not appear. But it was inevitable that 
questions should be asked and answers expected. It 
is not my purpose to ask you to consider the answers 
which have been given to the great question concern- 
ing God's dealing with the soul. I wish rather to go 
with you into the potter's house, and see what we can 
see for ourselves. 

The first thing which attracts our notice is the 
clay. It is of different qualities. Some of it is very 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



17 



pure and pliable, other is too soft — " f at " the potter 
calls it — to be used in its present state ; some is al- 
most white, and will make the finest porcelain, other 
has such an excess of iron that it will make only 
colored ware; some is doubtful, — it will form, but 
it will twist or crack in the firing. 

The interpretation of the parable is simple. The 
clay of the potter is human nature, good, bad, and in- 
different. Is there any of it so bad that it cannot be 
used ? Not if it be clay. There is no clay that the 
potter cannot employ. He cannot use stone, and he 
cannot make a vase of water. But clay of any sort 
he can make something of. Let us fix our mind upon 
that to begin with. No man is so bad that something 
cannot be made of him. There are men so hard that 
they seem to be stone ; there are others so flabby 
that it seems as if they never could hold together on 
the revolving wheel ; still, if they be men, something 
can be done. It may not be possible to make poets 
and statesmen of them, any more than it is possible 
to make Sevres china of Jersey clay ; but they can 
be moulded and fixed into some form of usefulness 
as long as they are men. 

The difficulty, however, which arises in some men's 
minds, even when that is settled, is this : Is not the 
best what we want ? Can we rest satisfied with any 
dealing with human nature which leaves the large ma- 
jority of the race on a low plane, and exalts only a 

2 



18 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



chosen few ? Now, if we cannot, how can the Cre- 
ator ? Must we not suppose that he too is disap- 
pointed in his work, and that he is limited in his 
operations ? How then can we believe in One who is 
omnipotent ? Is not he too limited by necessity, and 
are we not right in saying that that which determines 
character is the previous condition of the material 
with which God works ? And does not this lead 
finally to disbelief in God ? It certainly does lead to 
a disbelief in such a God as we have fancied. But it 
may lead to a belief in a nobler God than that. The 
potter puts his hand on a lump of clay. Now, we 
say, we know what that is to be. He can never make 
pure porcelain out of it. Well, who said that he 
intended to ? Who told us that he tried to and 
failed ? Who taught us that he wanted to, and found 
when the clay was in his hands that he must only do 
the best he could under the circumstances ? Did not 
the potter bring the clay into the house ? Did he not 
know what he would find there ? Have we discovered 
a secret which he did not know ? Not so. The fine- 
ness of the pottery is determined by the quality of the 
clay, and so is its color, but not its form. That is the 
work of the potter alone. It is in that that we see 
the power of his genius. And the coarser the material 
and the cruder its color, the more are we led to mar- 
vel at the genius and the goodness which was content 
to embody itself in such material. Let us learn of 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



19 



God, not teach him. The more we study human nature, 
the more we become convinced that God never in- 
tended all men to be alike. " In a great house there 
are vessels of honor and vessels of dishonor," — that 
is, nothing useless, only some better fitted than others 
for particular purposes. The more we study sociology, 
the more we feel convinced that it would be a fatal 
thing to have a town with but a single industry, — a 
nation with no variety of employments, — a world 
perfectly homogeneous. 

But it may be said, Does this apply to moral quali- 
ties ? Can man be content with any but the highest 
for himself or for those he loves ? No. If a man is 
discontented with that to which he has attained, it is 
because he has not answered God's purpose ; but as 
for his judgment on his neighbors it has not much 
value. We all admit that it is not possible for every 
man to have all the moral qualities in an equal degree. 
The important thing in life is that each man should 
he faithful in the employment of those which he has. 
It is with individuals as with nations. It was not 
necessary that David should have the quality of mercy 
largely developed, or that Rebecca should understand 
the importance of truth. The important thing was 
that David should be loyal to Him who made him 
a king, and that Rebecca should save the timid boy 
with whom was the promise of the covenant. Do not 



20 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



misunderstand me. I do not say that, if these truths 
had been revealed to them, they would not have been 
as morally bound to observe them as we are ; I only 
say that there was no need that they should have 
been revealed. Indeed, we may go farther, and say 
that they could not be revealed. We say that we 
cannot and God ought not to be content with any- 
thing less than the best. But what is best ? Is it 
best that all the clay in the world should be turned 
into Dresden china ? By no means. What is best 
is that there should be a great variety fitted for dif- 
ferent purposes. There are certain virtues which 
would be out of place in certain conditions of civiliza- 
tion, — that is, in certain individuals. Refined sensi- 
bility would be as embarrassing to a frontiersman as 
a carriage hung on delicate springs. What is needed 
is that he should be brave and just. We say that it 
is not as high a type as the courteous gentleman who 
would shrink from profanity as from physical pollu- 
tion. But the test is to be found not in the quality 
of the virtue, but in the faithfulness with which it is 
used. Two things then ought to be learned from a 
consideration of the clay in the potter's house. The 
first is, that God is dealing with men as individuals 
indeed, yet not as isolated beings, but as members 
of a great family. It is to the advantage of the fam- 
ily that they should differ, and it is to their own ad- 
vantage too. This difference in the clay, of which we 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



21 



have many theories, such as the law of heredity, or 
the influence of environment, are the conditions which 
God himself has ordained. That is the great mystery 
of creation, that God should embody himself in such 
material. But it is a mystery which has nothing dis- 
couraging about it until we separate it from God. 
All creation is self-limitation. The artist has an 
emotion, then a thought, then a will to embody that 
thought, but in the embodiment he has limited him- 
self, he has submitted to certain conditions. So does 
God. He can work, we may reverently say, only 
under those conditions. But we must not forget that 
they are of his own creation. He is working in clay. 
He must make what the clay is capable of expressing, 
only there is no clay which is not capable on a higher 
or lower plane, of being conformed to the image of 
Jesus Christ, — no man incapable of being filled with 
the spirit of God's Son, and expressing that spirit 
according to his peculiar capacity and subject to the 
conditions of the time in which he lives. 

The second thing which we see in the potter's house 
is the wheel. On it the lump is placed, and the un- 
seen foot presses the treadle, and the wheel revolves. 
About the wheel, too, men have formed a theory. 
First they began with the clay, — the substance of 
human nature. And there was evolved many a phi- 
losophy. But what is its value to-day ? The study 



22 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



of metaphysics is greatly discredited. It has pro- 
duced the spirit of agnosticism. Men, weary with 
speculations which lead to nothing, have said there 
is nothing to be known of the constitution of the 
clay nor the mind of the worker. And they are 
right : there is nothing to be known by the exclu- 
sive study of the human mind. And so they have 
turned to the study of the revolutions of the wheel. 

Ten years ago it seemed as if the study of nature 
would lead to such definite answers to the problem 
of life that the world was full of prophecies as to 
what the reorganized society would be like in the 
light of the new knowledge. The world was as full 
of hope, as sure of being delivered from the bondage 
of superstition, as it was in the first flush of the 
French Revolution. The revolving plane of nature, 
men cried, will give us the solution, not only of man's 
origin, but also of his destiny. Look at what can be 
seen, said the student of nature, instead of specu- 
lating upon what cannot be seen. The clay is on 
the wheel, and it turns and turns, and slackens not 
its speed, still less stops in answer to curses or 
groans. If you ask whence came the clay, the an- 
swer is the wheel made it. If men asked how it 
took forms of beauty, the answer was given by point- 
ing out that, if the wheel went slower by one revo- 
lution in a thousand years, the thing of beauty would 
be marred ; that if it increased its speed but the 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



23 



fraction of a second, the clay would be destroyed. 
The wheel never changes. Now its motion soothes 
like the lullaby of an infant, soon it will be like the 
dance of the wedding guests, the passionate rush of 
youth will follow, and then the slow sinking of old 
age. One man cries, It is good to be alive, and an- 
other moans for rest. But these are only phases 
of the clay ; the wheel remains unchanged and 
unchangeable. 

This theory had an array of facts few could dis- 
cover, but which every man could appreciate as soon 
as they were explained to him. For a while, men 
stood and gazed in wonder. Some were fascinated 
by the sight of things as old as the world, but which 
had never been noticed before, and found their joy in 
looking. Others boasted of the overthrow of faith. 
Some looked on with unspeakable anguish at the de- 
struction of man's noblest hopes. Well, how does the 
case stand to-day ? Men have roused themselves, and 
asked at length, What moves the wheel ? Such a sim- 
ple, natural question ! But no one can answer it. 
" We do not know," say the wisest students of nature. 
" Every increase of knowledge only serves to widen 
the surrounding abyss of nescience. And what is 
more, nothing can ever be known of that secret, for 
we have learned enough of nature to know that no 
study of it will tell us any of those things which 
we would like to know." The study of the clay was 



24 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



formulated in metaphysics, and led to agnosticism. 
The study of the wheel has done the same. There 
are, however, certain impressions which the mind 
has received from the study of nature which nothing 
will ever shake. The first is the universality of law, 
— that nothing happens anywhere except in accord- 
ance with invariable rules, which are never changed. 
The baby cries for the moon, but the moon sails on 
regardless of its puny rage. The boy chafes at the 
shortness of his holiday, but the sun goes down at 
its appointed time. The thief utters a charm to 
cloud the night, but moon and stars shine brilliantly. 
Old age steals on, and sudden death appears, and 
nothing you or I can do will change the relentless 
turning of the wheel. To-day, the sunlight strikes 
on us as the wheel turns by an open window ; to- 
morrow, the darkness covers us as the wheel goes 
through the shadow. No need to dwell on it. Life 
is governed by unchanging and unchangeable law. 
That is the one thing we have learned from the 
study of nature, and almost the only thing we have 
learned which throws any light on the great problem 
which perplexes us. 

Is this all that can be learned from the potter's 
house ? So many tell us, but as we turn away there 
comes, we cannot tell how, a feeling that we have not 
seen all. And to me that is after all the greatest 
mystery of life. How did it ever come to pass that 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



25 



man should dream that there is more to be known 
than can be seen ? How did he ever imagine, when 
everything that he sees is against it, that he should 
live when he was dead ? That is the mystery. 
From what does it arise ? How is it that I, a crea- 
ture of a moment, without power, an infinitesimal 
particle in the universe, should come to believe that 
this is not the whole story of my life, but that 
there is a hand upon me fashioning me and mould- 
ing me, making me walk in the paths which I would 
not, and comforting me, and filling me with hope ? 
It is because of something else which is in the pot- 
ter's house. That which the prophet saw first of 
all : "I saw the potter work a work on the wheels." 

He saw what we may see, the potter place a lump 
upon the wheel and the wheel revolve ; he saw the 
hands clasp it, and the clay begin to move. As we 
look to-day at such a sight, it seems as if the clay 
were doing all, and the potter's hand only followed its 
motion. If, however, we look more closely, we shall 
see that it is not the clay which works. There are 
two forces at work upon it; the one is the revolv- 
ing ivheel, and the other is the moulding hand. The 
force of the wheel alone would scatter the clay, the 
power of the hand alone would crush it. Its form is 
the resultant of these two forces. The wheel makes 
the conditions under which the hand can best work. 



26 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



The hand does not move and go behind the lump, as 
it seems. The hand remains still, the eye is on the 
clay, and when the position is right it is touched, and 
so formed. He lays his hand upon it, and we hold our 
breath. Surely he will crush it ! No, the weight is 
just enough to cause the shapeless mass to bosom out 
and embody the line of beauty. He touches it with 
his finger, and, as if in answer to a fairy's wand, it 
rises into the air, and rises more, till it seems as if it 
were about to snap and break from the base. But it 
does not. It has stopped as if by enchantment, and we 
see that a slender neck has been formed, round which 
a garland shall twine by and by. It is not finished 
yet. The finger goes in, and then the hand, and the 
small vessel expands until through the thin wall we 
see the nimble fingers of the potter working through 
the darkness that light may shine through the work 
of his hands. And now the hand is drawn out, and 
the slender neck contracts again as the fingers pass, 
and the vase is almost done. The wheel runs slow, 
and the potter cuts with his sharp knife the thing of 
beauty from the unused clay, smiles, and sighs as he 
lays it away, — smiles to see this new thing of beauty, 
but sighs to think of the danger of its breaking in 
the furnace which must try it. 

That too the prophet saw, as we may. The vase 
so delicate and tender must be walled up and left to 
show whether it can bear the strain and abide in the 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



27 



house forever, or whether it will crack or twist, and 
defeat the work wrought on the wheels. 

It is on that that our eyes must be fixed if we 
would gain comfort and hope. It is on that that the 
eyes of thoughtful men must be fixed before we can 
have a philosophy of life. The study of the clay 
will show us only the limitations of the clay. The 
study of the wheel will teach us nothing but the con- 
ditions under which the clay is moulded. The con- 
templation of the hand alone will yield nothing but 
unsubstantial dreams. The result of the first has 
been formulated in philosophy, of the second in 
science, of the third in theology. The first and the 
third have for the moment lost much of their former 
interest. The day is coming when the other shall 
lose interest too. Should there ever be a complete 
philosophy of life, it must be from the combination of 
what each thing in the potter's house has to teach us. 
The clay we can analyze. The wheel we can watch. 
How can we learn from the hand ? Only by taking the 
testimony which the clay itself bears to its own expe- 
rience, only by noting the effects produced on the hu- 
man soul by the awful, mysterious experiences of life. 
The soul believes that it is being moulded by a hand, 
— believes it so strongly that there are times when 
it is tempted to deny that there are any limitations 
or any laws by which the work is being done. If we 



28 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



look at any soul as it passes through life, we see that 
no other explanation of that which comes to it will 
satisfy the mind which asks for a reason and judges 
of the value of the answer. The limitations of your 
life and mine were fixed long before we saw the light. 
We have learned that to begin with. The experiences 
which come to you and me are not made to break 
in upon the course of this world, violating the law 
which governs life. Birth and death, joy and sorrow, 
unbounded hope and overwhelming disappointment, 
strength and sickness, — these are the things which 
come to all, the good and the bad alike. They come 
by rule. There is an undeviating law which governs 
life. That too we have learned. Where then is 
Providence ? That is to be seen in the moulding of 
our life. God's hand is on us, and in the turn of the 
wheel which brings joy he lifts us up, and in the turn 
which brings calamity he moulds us for some use. 

That is what men forget. The race has always 
believed that there was overruling, but supposed that 
the proof of it was to be found in the events of life, 
and then was dumfounded when these events proved 
different from what had been expected. It is not in 
the events, but in the result of them, that we shall find 
the proof of the hand of God. That thought frees us 
at once from the deadness of spirit which comes with 
the knowledge of inexorable law. If there be a hand 
fashioning, we may be sure that it chose the clay to 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



29 



make that which it knew the clay could become. 
If there is a hand moulding our souls, it must be that 
these laws were prepared by it because He knew that 
no condition which those laws produce is unfavorable 
to the development of the life which He loves. And 
more than that : if there be laws for the clay and laws 
for the wheel, there are likewise, we may be sure, 
laws for the moulding hand as well. What are these 
laws ? That we do not know, and that is why there 
is so much confusion and fear. It is that confusion 
which gives the power to attacks on religion, and 
enables the " religious novel " to sell. Men hope to 
have the confusion cleared away, and are ready to ac- 
cept any theory which seems to be simple. Now the 
simplest of all is that there is no such thing as provi- 
dence, that " miracle is the child of mendacity." But 
it is too simple. Suppose there are laws of the hand ; 
suppose there are laws of the spirit ; then it would be 
strange indeed if they did not make themselves mani- 
fest in human life. There are laws of matter, and 
there are laws of mind. Before mind appeared, this 
world was one thing and that the simple expression of 
those laws. But when mind appeared, it became 
another thing, for the laws of mind manifested them- 
selves in the material world. Yet, strictly speaking, 
each such manifestation was a miracle, that is, the 
sign of the operation of a higher force than was at 
work in the material itself. Agriculture and civiliza- 



30 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



tion are perpetual miracles ; that is, they are effects 
produced by the action of laws which do not reside in 
the material which they affect. The building of a 
house is a miracle, and so is the warming and the 
lighting of it. Nature would never have done the one 
or the other. The natural action of the laws of matter 
would never have produced these results. We are 
so familiar with these results that we do not consider 
how they arose, yet the key to the mystery is to be 
found there. Now, if there are laws of the spirit, 
should we not expect spiritual manifestations in the 
intellectual and material life ? The difficulty here 
lies in the fact that we have so little familiarity with 
the spiritual life that, when we hear of such things, 
we say it is contrary to all experience. Nature would 
never have done so. Mind would never have done so. 
Both are true. But if neither the material nor the 
intellectual are the highest manifestations of life, if 
the moral and spiritual be higher, and we have but 
slight experience of their power, is it an answer 
to say such and such things are contrary to expe- 
rience ? Whose experience ? The experience of 
Jesus ? Are we sure that we know the law of the life 
of Jesus ? If not, it is neither philosophical nor scien- 
tific to assume that we are in a position to judge of 
what its manifestations ought to be. 

I mention this, not to enter into any discussion of 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



31 



the so called historical miracles, but simply to point 
out that the great discovery of the universality of 
law does not in any way overthrow the belief in a 
never failing Providence, nor affect what we some- 
times unhappily name " special providences." 

Before we end, there is one thing more to be said, 
and that is, that the parable is incomplete in one re- 
spect. There are times when we can speak of human- 
ity as clay in the hands of the potter, but we all know 
that this human clay has the power of resistance. It 
can tear itself from the moulding hand, it can fatten 
itself in sin, so as to frustrate the work on the wheels. 
It can fail to co-operate with the potter, and so, 
though it take a pleasing form for a moment, be ru- 
ined in the furnace which shall try every man of what 
sort he is. So the house of the potter has an exhor- 
tation for us, as well as an object lesson. What it is 
saying to every man is, Do not resist, but co-operate. 

Look at the clay : it is yourself, it has its limita- 
tions. Two things are before you when that truth 
has entered into your soul. You may despair ; you 
may throw away your life because it is physically, 
mentally, or morally incomplete, or marred. Or you 
may submit. You may learn to be content ; you may 
rise to thank God that you are what you are. You 
may be made useful, and in the eyes of the Master 
beautiful, because expressing the love of God. 



32 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



Look on the wheel. It is the revolving life, with 
all its manifold experiences. They may be so joyous 
that we forget that we are here for a purpose, and pass 
the time in the enjoyment of things which unfit us for 
beauty or power. They may be hard and bitter, and 
you may upbraid God. You may say, I have been 
a religious man, and look at me, old and poor and 
sad ! We may cry out, not " What advantage hath 
the Jew?" but "What advantage hath the Christian ?" 
We may think of God as having changed the course of 
the world to afflict us, or we may curse him because he 
did not change it and so save us from this cross. But 
there is another possibility, and that is to say, " Shall 
not the Judge of all the earth do right?" Are not 
these laws, which He established and which now bear 
heavy on me, for a purpose ? We may go farther, 
and say, " The consolations of God are not small 
with us." We may hear the voice of the Apostle 
saying, " My brethren, think it not strange concern- 
ing the fiery trial as if some strange thing happened to 
you ; there hath no trial taken you but such as is com- 
mon to man." What you suffer untold millions have 
suffered, and many shall suffer before God's work is 
done. Jesus and the two thieves suffered alike, but 
Jesus felt the hand of the Father on him, and so at 
last did one of the thieves, and that knowledge is the 
gateway to Paradise ; for the consciousness of son- 
ship is the object of life. 



THE POTTER'S WHEEL. 



33 



He wrought a work on the wheels. Let nothing 
shake that faith. Submit your souls to God. Do 
not ask Him to make you great, only to make you 
useful. Do not ask Him to change the course of this 
world that you may be happy, but only that you may 
not be confounded. 

The hand of the potter is on your life, moulding 
it in the midst of manifold experiences. It is the 
hand of your Father, — the same hand which was on 
Jesus, and moulded that sweet Jewish boy into the 
perfect manifestation of His own glory. Remember 
that, and He will make you a thing of beauty, fit for 
the Master's use. 



3 



III. 



THE KILLING OF THE SON. 

Hear another parable : There was a certain householder, 
which planted a vineyard, and hedged it round about, and 
digged a winepress in it, and built a tower, and let it out 
to husbandmen, and went into a far country. And when 
the time of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the 
husbandmen, that they might receive the fruits of it. And 
the husbandmen took his servants, and beat one, and hilled 
a?iother, and stoned another. Again, he sent other servants 
more than the first ; and they did unto them likewise. 
But last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, They 
will reverence my son. But when the husbandmen saw 
the son, they said among themselves, This is the heir ; 
come, let us kill him, and let us seize on his inheritance. 
And they caught him, and cast him out of the vineyard, 
and slew him. — St. Matthew, xxi. 33-39. 

HPHE first thing that strikes us, I think, in reading 
this parable, is the great liberality of the house- 
holder. It is evident that that was intended to catch 
our notice ; for we are not simply told that there was 
a certain householder which had a vineyard which he 
let out to husbandmen, but we are told all that he did 
for it. He digged a winepress, and he built a hedge 



THE KILLING OF THE SON. 



35 



about it ; he arranged it in every way so that the 
work might be easily and profitably done, and then, 
naturally, he looked to receive the fruits of it. 

And the second thing, I think, that we note, is the 
variety of the appeals that are made. Again and 
again messengers are sent to ask for the fruit of the 
vineyard, that belonged to the lord thereof ; and not- 
withstanding the fact that the first servants were 
maltreated, other servants are sent, more (that is, 
more honorable) than the first, and they received the 
same treatment. And then he only makes one more 
appeal, saying, " I will send my son ; surely they will 
reverence him when they see him." And lie sent his 
son. So that the second thing, I say, that we note in 
this passage is the patience of the householder, and 
the continuousness of the appeal that was made to 
these wicked men. 

Let us look at it this morning, and see what story 
it has to tell to you and me, — what we may learn 
from it that will make us better men and women. 

In the first place, is not our position very much 
like that of the men to whom the vineyard was let ? 
Has not much been done for you and me, my friends, 
so that God has a right to expect a return from us ? 
Any one of us, I think, that will look back over his 
life, will be inclined to feel that a vast deal of his life 
was a thing which he had no hand in shaping. The 
great things that have come to you and me have come, 



36 



THE KILLING OF THE SON. 



as we are sometimes tempted to say, by accident. At 
any rate, however we may explain it, the great things, 
the most important things, are things that were set- 
tled by " some Power not ourselves." We did not 
choose, I take it, where we would go to school. We 
did not choose where we would go to college. We 
did not choose what particular house we would enter 
into business with. All those things were arranged 
without our knowledge or consent, and the blessings 
that have accrued from those first steps in life have 
come without our foresight. So that every one of us 
might say, as St. Paul did, " What hast thou that 
thou didst not receive ? " 

God, if there be a God, has done great things for 
you and me, every one of us. The most unfortunate, 
the most sorrowful, the least successful of any one of 
us here to-day, — ■ God has been preparing a place for 
that soul to work that it might develop itself ; and he 
has looked to every one of us here for fruit. 

And, again, we are like the men in the parable, in- 
asmuch as the appeals that have been made to us have 
been various and continuous. If we look into our own 
lives and consider what God had a right to expect of 
us, and what the return is that we have made, I think 
every one of us must be impressed with the patience 
of the Divine Father. Look at the appeals that have 
come to us, — God's servants that He has sent to ask 
for the fruit of the vineyard . Conscience, — which one 



THE KILLING OF THE SON. 



37 



of us has not had that messenger knock at the gate, 
and, being entered, say to us, Thus and thus hast thou 
done that was wrong. Which of us has not gone and 
looked over the hedge of the vineyard to see if the 
master was coming ? Who here, even as a little child, 
has not known the sudden pang, the unexpected sick- 
ness, that has brought with it the awful dread of the 
discovery of that which neither father nor mother 
knew? What boy has not seen another one speak- 
ing to the master, and known what it was to tremble 
lest that boy might tell all that he knew ? Who 
here has not known the coming of conscience, with 
its awful warning, with its solemn demand for the 
fruit of that which God has given us, and which 
God expects every one of us to render ? 

No need to dwell upon it. That is one of the fun- 
damental ethical instincts there is no need to argue 
about. The instant it is mentioned, every one of us 
can look back over the path we have come and see, 
perhaps in the past week, or month, or year, or as 
we glance down the hill that we have climbed, the 
little boy or the little girl at the bottom of it, fearing 
because of sin. 

And there are other messengers that have come to 
us. Joy, that has come to our hearts, saying, Now 
render thanks to God for all that He has done for you. 
The blessings that He has given you, the joys that He 
has poured out upon you, the great opportunities that 



38 THE KILLING OF THE SON 

He has opened to you, — have you been thankful for 
them ? Joy is a messenger that God sends, and says, 
Give me the fruit of my vineyard. 

Or there is another that comes. Opportunity itself, 
the opening up of a larger possibility for serving God 
and employing the full activities of our life. Who 
has not thrilled to that ? Who has not known what 
it was suddenly to have the door thrown open and a 
new vista opened for the possibility of work, for self- 
improvement, for doing good to others, and has not 
felt in that moment that he was near to God, that 
God is interested in him and has seen fit to send out 
his messenger to call him, even him, to undertake the 
great and splendid work of life ? 

We may not dwell upon it further. Every one of 
us can look back over his life and find that again and 
again messengers have come, the messenger of con- 
science, the messenger of joy, the messenger of op- 
portunity, every one of them saying, Render me the 
fruit of the vineyard. 

But we are told that he sent another delegation, 
more honorable than those that had gone before. Is 
there anything in our lives that accords with that ? 
I take it yes. All the art that you and I have been 
privileged to gaze upon has been a messenger, saying 
to us, Render to God the fruit of the vineyard ; come 
out into this larger life of beauty that God has ere- 



THE KILLING OF THE SON. 



39 



ated, and acknowledge Him as the glory of the world. 
All the music that you and I have heard that was 
noble and true has been another of God's messen- 
gers, saying to every one of us, Come into the glory 
of God's harmony, that your life may no longer be 
full of discord, but full of the peace of God that 
passeth understanding. All the great books that 
have come trooping into your life and mine have 
come as God's messengers, calling us to a deeper 
knowledge, to a larger outlook, to a more splendid, 
worthy life. 

Again, we may not dwell upon it, because it would 
simply expand itself into all the agencies of educa- 
tion, and development, and improvement, that you 
and I have come under the influence of. The mes- 
senger of prosperity that has brought us new wealth, 
with its opportunities for generosity and mutual help- 
fulness, — the messengers of books, the messengers of 
music, the messengers of art, — who does not know 
them? All God's great works that were before you 
and me have come trooping into our lives, every one 
saying, some in a hard and uncompromising voice, 
Pay the fruit of the vineyard, — some stretching out 
their hands with a benign look, saying, Render to the 
Lord the fruit of his vineyard. 

the patience of God ! The multitude of interests 
that God has sent into our lives ! Perchance one of 
them will bring back to God the fruit of his vineyard. 



40 



THE KILLING OF THE SON 



Surely one of the mistakes, as it seems to me, which 
we make in our efforts to help one another, the mis- 
take the parent makes, the mistake the teacher makes, 
the mistake the preacher makes, is this, that we sup- 
pose the particular thing that has influenced us will 
inevitably influence our child, pupil, or parishioner. 
That is a great mistake. God has great troops of 
messengers, and the one that has come to me may 
never come to you. 

What is the secret, then, by which we shall under- 
stand God's dealing with us ? What is the meaning 
of it ? Why is it that the messenger that appealed to 
me, and caused me to fall down in utter abasement of 
soul and ask God for one more trial before I was called 
to my final account, — why is it, my friends, that that 
same messenger does not take hold of your soul and 
bring it home to God ? It is because, I think, that 
only that messenger can come with his message to 
you or me who is like you or me. Art will not ap- 
peal to this man, because there is nothing artistic in 
his nature ; or, at any rate, it lies there latent, buried 
so deep that it is impossible for the particular work 
of art to call it forth. Another man cannot hear the 
call that comes in strains of music. Another man 
cannot hear the call that comes in prosperity or new 
opportunity. Every one of us is different, and there- 
lore it is that God is pouring out the great multitude 
of his messengers to his people that he loves, in the 



THE KILLING OF THE SON. 



41 



hope that some one messenger will find a likeness in 
each one of his children that will call that child home 
bearing his sheaves with him. 

And is that all ? No, the most important comes 
last. Last of all he sent unto them his son, saying, 
Surely they will reverence my son. Now of course, 
the reason that the householder said, Surely they will 
reverence my son was not simply because of his love 
of the son, his recognition of the beauty of the son's 
face, his knowledge of the graciousness of the son's 
voice, his enjoyment of the glory of the son's pres- 
ence. All that is true. But we dwell too much upon 
it. There is another side to it. That " Surely they 
will reverence my son " was called forth by the knowl- 
edge that deep down in every one of those to whom 
the householder sent was the likeness of the son. 

Art does not appeal to you, music does not appeal 
to you, the great intellectual works of the world do 
not appeal to you. What, then, is there in common 
between every one of us gathered here to-day, with all 
our infinite variety ? It is the likeness to the Son of 
the living God. It is the essential divinity in every 
poor sinner on this earth to-day. That is the one 
thing that God makes his final appeal to, probing 
deeper and deeper into every life, until God's last 
appeal to the soul stands forth. God says, " Surely 
that soul will reverence my son." 



42 



THE KILLING OF THE SON 



How does He come to us ? How does God send 
his last appeal to you and me ? Soon we shall hear 
the lifting of the Christmas hymn that tells us the 
great story of the beginning of God's sending of his 
Son in human flesh. To-day I would speak, not of 
the historic manifestation of Christ made flesh, but 
of that spiritual coming of God's Son to your soul 
and mine. How has it come ? 

Whenever there has been presented to us the vis- 
ion of a nobler and truer life, whenever you have felt 
that it was possible to live a better life than you have 
been living, to be a nobler, purer, truer, healthier, more 
glorious character, there has stood before you God's 
image of humanity, the revelation of God's ideal ful- 
filled in Jesus Christ. 

Now how variously it comes ! Here is a man that 
has lived a careless life. He has been good enough, 
as his friends say ; he is not a bad sort of fellow. 
He is honest, reliable, but he is not religious. He is 
not a Christian. He is not in any conscious relation 
to Jesus Christ. What is needed if that man is ever 
to render to God the fruit that God looks for ? It 
must be by answering to God's last appeal to his 
soul, the revelation of his Son to him. How does 
it come ? 0, it comes so differently ! Some day the 
friend that has been with you in all your journey, that 
has always had a light shining on his face that you 
have looked at sometimes with a vague curiosity, and 



THE KILLING OF THE SON 



43 



sometimes with a half pity, and sometimes with a pro- 
found sense that his life is different from your own, — 
that friend lies down beside you to die. The end has 
come. You see that life go out into the darkness, 
into the mystery, as serene and confident and full of 
peace as the child lies down at night to sleep. The 
faith that has been all through this life of which I 
speak simply manifests itself in its perfection at the 
end. God has sent his Son in that death, God has 
sent his Son in that faith, to stand before your face 
and say to you, Give me the fruit of the vineyard ; 
render to me that which belongs to me ; live as my 
son ; you are my child. The perfect Son comes to 
his own likeness, and asks for the fruit of the 
vineyard. 

It comes in my shame. When I am continuing in 
sin, suddenly there is the revelation to me of a life 
that is so different from that that I am now living 
that it seems impossible that there can be anything 
in common between the perfect life and my sinful one. 
And yet in the very knowledge of that difference there 
is the deeper knowledge of the oneness, and I stretch 
out my hands and say, Lord, save, or I perish. 

It comes in sickness, it comes in despondency, it 
comes in prosperity, it comes in sorrow, it comes in 
misfortune, it comes in great trials and perplexities 
of life. Always God leaves not himself without wit- 
nesses. Whenever the door of your life is thrown 



44 



THE KILLING OF THE SON. 



open by some great wind of happiness that causes 
the sunlight to stream into the darkest corners of it, 
and you lift up yourself in new joy and thankfulness, 
because the meaning of life has come to you, there 
stands the Son of God. If the door of your life is 
put open by that dark and shadowy hand that makes 
no noise and leaves no sign behind, — the awful fig- 
ure of death, — there is the presence of the Son of 
God. Surely they will reverence my Son. Surely 
God's last appeal must not be in vain. 

And yet how often it is in vain. This parable was 
spoken at the very end of the Master's ministry. It 
was one of the parables of judgment ; but one thing 
about it which makes it different from the others 
that we do not sufficiently bear in mind is this : that 
it is not the householder that sits in judgment on 
the poor wretch that has failed to render the fruit of 
the vineyard ; it is the man himself that ascends the 
throne of judgment, and decides whether the creden- 
tials of the Son that the Father has sent are worthy 
of consideration, whether or not he will reject or 
receive the Son. 

That is the great mystery of life, that in the silence 
of your own soul, my friend, you decide whether this 
life revealed in the Gospel, of which you have heard 
from the day you were able to hear anything, — 
whether it is worth while to receive it or not. You 



THE KILLING OF THE SON. 



45 



are the judge, and the Son of the living God stands 
at the bar of your poor human judgment, and says, 
Will you receive me or will you reject me ? 

You may say to me, Do you believe that there is 
anything so deliberate as that ? Do you believe that 
I actually consider the matter in that way, and decide 
that 1 will not be a disciple of Jesus Christ ? Because, 
if you do, you do not understand the mysteries of the 
human heart. Well, look at it in the other way, and 
consider what comes to the man that accepts Jesus 
Christ ; who acknowledges that the life that has been 
revealed to him, however it may have been revealed, is 
the true life ; that there is something like it in him, 
and that he will devote himself to its service and be a 
changed man. What happens to that man ? Is his 
judgment deliberate ? I suppose that the last act in 
which a man finally surrenders his selfishness, his 
self-will, to that divine life, is a deliberate act ; but I 
suppose that, in every case back of it has gone an 
infinite number of small acts which the man did not 
know were tending irresistibly to the final statement 
of his judgment, bringing him to the point where he 
must say, To whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life. Thou art the Christ, the Son 
of the living God. 

It is a long process, but there comes some moment 
in a man's life when his judgment is a deliberate one. 
Every little child that has ever done that which his 



46 



THE KILLING OF THE SON. 



conscience told him to do when he did not want to do 
it, has begun to walk the path that will lead to Jesus 
Christ. Every poor, weak, pitiful boy that at school 
has been led away by some evil companion and done 
that which in his heart of hearts he knew was wrong, 
has begun to reject the Son of the living God. 

What happens when actually it comes to pass that 
you and I declare judgment in this matter ? What 
happens, I say ? Look, for the moment that is left us, 
at the way in which that judgment which has really 
been the accumulation of innumerable little acts and 
thoughts and statements finally utters itself as the 
deliberate statement of a man's opinion about God's 
dealing with him. What comes to pass ? It is al- 
ways sudden. It is always, in a sense, unexpected. 
When a man has done the thing, he is always sur- 
prised that he did it ; but, as I say, it is the result of 
a long process. What can a man do when actually it 
comes to pass that this messenger of God will not let 
him alone ? What can he do ? 

There are but two things he can do. One is to 
receive Him, and the other is to reject Him. This 
conflict cannot go on forever, because, my friends, 
what every one of us wants is happiness, peace and 
quiet, and joy and serenity and harmony of life. Can 
you have it with a life standing by your own with its 
unceasing demand, with its constant rebuke, with its 
glorious revelation ? Is it possible that I, in my sin 



THE KILLING OF THE SON. 



47 



and in my evil-doing, can beat peace when that life 
is there ? 

Why, my friends, the standing of Jesus Christ by 
your life and mine before we have been converted, 
before we have given ourselves up to Him, is like 
the sudden appearance of the face of the mother in 
some house of shame where the son riots. It is 
like the coming home of the patriot, maimed and 
wounded, and showing himself to the man that, in 
his selfishness, had refused to bear arms for the 
glorious cause. It is the solemn face of the father 
looking on the son that has wasted his substance and 
is going down to degradation. 

How is it possible that there should be peace and 
harmony, serenity and happiness, when these two 
things stand there opposed ? That is the reason 
that in every case, sooner or later, a man either re- 
ceives the Son of God, or says to himself, This is 
the heir ; now I am tired of it ; I want to be let 
alone ; I want this conscience that is continually 
probing and worrying me, — I want that thing to 
cease. And the man sinks himself deeper in his 
lusts, in his dishonesty, in his selfishness. For 
what? That he may silence the voice of the liv- 
ing God. 

That is the killing of the Son of God. And every 
man that deliberately turns away from the vision of 
a nobler life, and goes back again to that which he 



48 



THE KILLING OF THE SON. 



knows in his soul is wrong, that man has done what 
these men of the vineyard did. He has said. This is 
the heir ; this is the one that is the cause of all the 
trouble and perplexity of my life ; he will not leave 
me alone ; therefore he shall be cast out and killed. 
And there are men walking this earth to-day, and 
in this city to-day, that are just as truly guilty of the 
blood of the Son of God as Judas who sold Jesus, or 
Pontius Pilate who gave the word that he should be 
crucified. 

St. John tells us in his Gospel that a year before 
the crucifixion Jesus stood on the hill of the Temple, 
and, looking into the faces of the people who scorned 
him, said, Why go ye about to kill me ? They were at 
once astonished and indignant, and answered, Thou 
hast a devil, who goeth about to kill thee. But 
Jesus knew that they were killing the Divine Life in 
their souls, and that soon they would kill the Prince 
of Life. 0, let us look into our lives and see whither 
they tend ! 

And now there is but one word more, and that is 
the other possibility of it all : the possibility, when 
that life comes to us, to lift up our hearts and say, 
This is God's last appeal to me ; this is God's last 
message. Not because the infinite mercy of God is 
exhausted, but because the possibility of my nature 



THE KILLING OF THE SON 



49 



is exhausted. When God has sent his own Son to 
appeal to that which is in me like him, God has 
made his last appeal, has probed down to the very 
root of my being. 

0, it is possible in that moment to respond, and, 
as John says in the first chapter of his Gospel, to 
receive him. And to as many as received him ; to as 
many as said, Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief ; 
to as many as have said, Lord, I am a sinner, thou 
hast the power to change my sin and set me pure 
before God ; to as many as have said, Lord, I am 
bound with the chain of sin, shame has wrapped me 
round and round, thou canst release me; Lord, my 
heart is broken and my life has become a burden, 
but thou, I believe, canst be my comfort and my 
strength ; — to every such man there is given power 
to become the son of God, to live a new life; to 
walk this earth, so full of trouble, so full of sick- 
ness, so full of quarrelsomeness, so full of meanness 
and dishonesty, — to walk it a new man, knowing 
that the Eternal is our Father, that He is with us, and 
was before us, and is leading us on. Not because He 
desires us to give fruit that He may enjoy it does He 
send again and again, and Him "last of all," but be- 
cause he has created every one of us that we might 
yield up the glory of our own nature, and find, in so 
yielding, our own peace, our own joy, and our own 
glory. 

4 



50 



THE KILLING OF THE SON 



O, I beg of you,- as you listen to the beginning of 
that great story of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, 
I beg you to believe, every man and woman and 
child here to-day, that two paths are opening up be- 
fore every one of you. The one path leads to the 
crucifixion of the Son of God afresh, and the putting 
him to an open shame, and the other path leads to 
the reception of Jesus Christ, and with that recep- 
tion God's great gift of the power to be called and to 
be the child of the Living God. 



IV. 



REVELATION. 

And they heard the voice of the Lord God. 

Genesis, iii. 8. 

THE Christian year may be compared to a noble 
symphony. It begins with the far-off murmur of 
judgment, and ends with the triumphal burst of All 
Saints' day, when we " see the dead, both small and 
great, stand before God." But each season has its 
own note. In Advent we have the three great means 
used in the Divine education brought to our notice, — 
the Bible, the Church, and the adversities of life. 

We are to think to-day of Revelation, and its record 
in the Bible. 

" And they heard the voice of the Lord God." 
This is the beginning of the record of Revelation, and 
like all beginnings it is full of interest, for in it we 
find the key to all that follows. It is so simple. 
From the beginning the narrative tells us of God's 
speaking. Suddenly man hears the Divine voice. A 
commandment, we are told, had been given the man, 
but there had been no conversation, no intercourse, 



52 



REVELATION. 



with God. Man knew that he was accountable ; that 
was all ; there was a dim sense of right and wrong. 
The beauty of the morning passed in joy, the heat 
of the noonday filled his veins, in the pride of his 
strength he sinned, and in the silence of the evening 
he heard the voice of the Lord God. 

What does it mean ? The man who wrote these 
words long ago was not troubled by questions which 
we ask now. He had had experiences of life, and 
had had thoughts come to him that he had never 
dreamed of before. It was like the lifting of a veil, 
and he saw his heart. He put himself in the place 
of that man of whom Hebrew tradition spoke, and 
said, He sinned. When he sinned he knew that he 
was naked. He knew at once his helplessness and 
his shame, and in that new and awful experience he 
heard the voice of the Lord God. He saw the future 
of man, — a life of toil and weariness destined to 
end in death. But it was possible by the hope of 
triumph sometime, somewhere. The voice spoke, 
the veil was lifted. 

There are two ways of approaching such a story as 
this. They are sometimes called the sceptical and 
the believing spirit. I prefer to call them the critical 
and the sympathetic spirit. 

The critical spirit says, " How did the man know 



REVELATION. 



53 



that this was the voice of God? 1 ' and the record gives 
us no answer. The Bible begins with an immense 
assumption. It is that there is a God, that all things 
visible are the effects of His energy, that man is es- 
sentially one with Him. Granted the assumption, 
and Revelation follows inevitably. The father must 
speak to his child. The child must know when his 
father speaks. To have that assumption for the 
groundwork of our thinking, and to find illustrations 
of it in one's life, is to be in sympathy with the record 
of the many revelations. But to deny that assump- 
tion, and then insist that the experiences of men 
should prove that they are not illusions, is to do what 
would not be tolerated in the daily affairs of life. 
It is to arraign the soul for lunacy, and insist that it 
shall prove itself sane. It is enough to make a man 
insane to put him in such a position ; and this is not 
a mere figure of speech, it is a fact which many an 
inmate of our asylums witnesses to, — the victims of 
religious depression they are sometimes called, and 
strange conclusions are drawn from their state ; but 
so far as I know no one has pointed out that this 
condition has been produced not by religion, but by 
that bastard rationalism which called in question that 
fundamental conviction of the human mind that it is 
in communion with the Eternal God. 

Of course, if we are entering a plea for religion as 
if it were an exceptional thing and needed special 



54 



REVELATION. 



protection in order that it might survive, then no 
contempt would be too great for its advocates. But 
we make no such plea, we simply submit that it 
should receive the same treatment that is given to 
the knowledge derived from the senses. Is that 
done ? I appeal to those of you wiio look with a 
half-pitying curiosity at the religious life and lament 
that it has not the same proof that is to be found 
elsewhere. I ask where ? In the testimony of the 
senses ? Certainly there is nothing that I can be 
more sure of than the resistance of this plate to the 
pressure of my hand, or that I see the people who 
sit before me ; but if any child were to ask how I 
know it, I should have to fall back on that childish 
answer which is the unconscious testimony of the 
human mind to faith in its own affirmations, " I know 
because I do." For consider what is required when 
we ask for proof of the reality of sensual impressions. 
We are asking that proof be given of the existence 
of the external universe. But that cannot be done. 
It may be that the universe is as unsubstantial as the 
cloudy figures of rampant horses and flying dragons 
that children see in the evening sky. It is their 
imagination alone which gives form to the nebulae. 
It may be that we have inherited a fancy of some 
early generation, and stand like children looking at 
we know not what, and calling it mountains and 
rivers and lakes. The great assumption of a visible 



REVELATION. 



55 



universe, coupled with the kindred assumption that 
our judgment on the senses' testimony is true, under- 
lies all our thought of visible things. 

All the truths of mathematics are based on axioms, 
self-evidencing truths, that is, statements which com- 
mend themselves to educated minds. All the monu- 
ments of science rest on the faith that this is an 
intelligible universe, that there is order in it, and that 
that order can be interpreted by man. What is the 
result, then, of these considerations ? It is this, that 
what we call Revelation, that is, the communion be- 
tween man and God, rests upon an assumption whicli 
cannot be demonstrated perhaps, but yet does not 
differ in that respect from other knowledge which we 
think we possess. 

There are two objections which are sometimes 
made to this line of argument : first, that it seems 
to prove that, because all things are uncertain, there- 
fore one thing is as improbable as another, which is 
absurd. To which I answer, that all the argument 
was intended for was to answer an objection by show- 
ing that the same objection would invalidate all con- 
clusions, — not that revelation is true, but simply that 
it is possible. Another objection is, that while it may 
be true that scepticism underlies all knowledge, yet 
the testimony of humanity is unanimous as to the 
witness of the senses, while it cannot be pretended 
that this is the case with revelation. This is very 



56 



REVELATION. 



true, but why is it so ? It is because the immense 
majority of the human race has been in the past, and is 
to-day, chiefly interested in things of the senses, and 
consequently sensuous things are more easily appre- 
ciated by us than things of the spirit. But we are 
just as sure that the square on the hypothenuse is 
equal to the sum of the squares on the other two 
sides of a right-angled triangle as we are of any fact 
witnessed to by the senses. Yet how small is the 
number of men of whom that is true. It is question- 
able if to-day there be a man alive to whom all the 
propositions of Euclid are axioms, as they were said 
to be to Newton ; but that does not shake our faith 
in their truth. We cannot explain them to the abo- 
rigines of Australia, we cannot translate them into 
the gibberish of the ape-like man of the African forest, 
but we none the less believe them to be true. So the 
objection fails. It is true that the God-consciousness 
of man is but partially developed, but that is what we 
might expect, for look at the story of the human race 
as told by science. There was a time when there 
was life upon this planet which had no consciousness. 
There came a time when to that life there came the 
dim dawning of a new day, and life groped and felt 
and vaguely saw. The universe was revealed to life, 
and in that revelation was implied clothing and better 
food, buildings, and music and art. 



REVELATION. 



57 



There came another day. Life became self-con- 
scious, differentiated itself from the universe, rose 
like an island in the universal sea, or stood like a gi- 
ant and beat against the titanic forces of nature. It 
was the beginning of the revelation of self, and in 
it was hidden war and industry, and the skill that 
would sail the seas and span the rivers and " out of 
the hills dig brass." 

There came another day when man's spirit looked 
within, and he saw something of the mystery of his 
own spirit. It was the day of the revelation of 
personality, and was the dawn of law to protect that 
person, and history to instruct, and poetry to inspire. 
Homer and Virgil, Dante and Shakespeare, Milton 
and Browning, then began to be. 

And then came a day when in the inmost caverns 
of his life man heard a voice which he knew was the 
voice of the Eternal, and in that faint whisper there 
was the promise of Abraham and Moses, of Zoroaster 
and Buddha, of the Psalms of David and the vision 
of Isaiah, of the moan of Jeremiah and the shout 
of Ezekiel, of the thunders of John, and the whirl- 
wind of Peter, and the earthquake energy of Paul, 
and the still, small voice that said, " When ye pray 
say, Our Father." The history of mankind is the his- 
tory of revelation, the lifting of the veil which hid 
nature, and man, and God. 



58 



REVELATION. 



The record of the revelation of the spiritual life, 
the slow lifting of the veil from conscience, the open- 
ing of the vistas to hope, the visions of faith, are 
found in many books, written in many tongues ; and 
the writers of wise books, as the Vedas or the Avestas, 
or the Koran, or the Bible, have always been spoken 
of as inspired men, — men filled with a spirit dif- 
ferent from their time, — a spirit of deeper faith and 
larger hope and wider charity, a spirit of spiritual 
insight, the effect, in a word, of the influence upon 
their souls of the Spirit of God. 

If we ask ourselves about the relative merits of 
these books, we may find many ways in which they 
may be tested ; but perhaps the one which will appeal 
most to us is the simple one of works. What book 
had the greatest influence on mankind ? What book 
has nerved soldiers, and inspired statesmen, and in- 
flamed poets, and given subjects to art ? What book 
has entered into life and made the child thoughtful, 
the youth temperate, and the man patient ? What 
has blessed marriage, and comforted the dying, and 
given hope to those who sit in darkness and in the 
shadow of death ? There is but one answer. It is 
that collection of Hebrew and Christian literature 
which is called the Bible. 

If we ask ourselves what has been the secret of its 
success, it may not be easy to find the answer. Partly, 
no doubt, it is due to the immense diversity of the 



REVELATION. 



59 



subject it treats. From the fierce lust of prehistoric 
man to the sweet love story of Ruth the story runs. 
We are led from the idol-worshipping slaves at the 
foot of Horeb to the splendors of Solomon's tem- 
ple. We listen breathlessly to the latest rumor from 
Egypt, and tremble at the tramp of the Assyrian host. 
We delight in Joseph and David, the types of purity 
and courage. There is nothing like it except in 
Shakespeare. Whom shall we put beside Hamlet and 
Macbeth, Henry V. and Hotspur, Shylock and Lear, 
Wolsey, Katherine, and Portia, and Rosalind? We 
put beside them Miriam and Deborah, Ruth and Es- 
ther, the story of the subtle poison that worked in 
Balaam's veins, the madness of Saul, the dying bed of 
David, the weird Elijah, the fearless Micaiah, Jezebel 
and Ahab, Jeremiah and Daniel, the mighty Elisha, 
the crafty Gehazi, the princely Naaman, and the dear 
little home-sick girl that sent him to be cured of 
his leprosy. 

Doubtless this marvellous power in the Hebrew 
dramatists has had something to do with the power 
of the book, but there is a deeper reason still. It is 
that men have found it a light unto their path. Con- 
sciously or unconsciously, they felt that this history 
was not an exception to the story of life, but the in- 
terpretation of life. They felt that all life was a 
revelation, and from these men of old they learned 
to listen for the voice of the Lord God, and heard it. 



60 



REVELATION. 



But above all there is the revelation in the Gospels of 
our Saviour's life of joy and patience and power, and 
in the Epistles the revelation of the revolution in so- 
ciety which that life wrought, and the wonder of the 
converted lives of which it teaches. This story has 
slowly brought those who have known its power to 
feel that this book is the text-book of the child of 
God, that God speaks because He loves us, that man 
can hear because he is the child. 

Looked at in this way, my friends, as the noblest 
record the world has of the God-spirit working upon 
the heart of man, how rich and holy our Bible seems. 
How petty and insignificant the disputes that break 
its majestic calm ! Were the men who wrote this 
book inspired ? See if they inspire you. Compare 
the story of Eden in Genesis with the same story in 
its Chaldean form. In both are the mythical tree of 
life, the fabled serpent, the living sword ; but in Gen- 
esis amid the vain shadows of life walks the Lord 
God, to reprove and comfort and bless. You feel 
that you have opened a history of a humanity which 
lives and breathes and has its being in God. 

Were these writers infallible ? Not if they were hu- 
man. The astronomy and geography, the political 
economy and jurisprudence, the social customs and 
sanitary laws, were of their day ; but He whom they 
knew in spite of their limitations is the Eternal. 



REVELATION. 



61 



When we stand rapt in admiration before some 
masterpiece of the Venetian painters, do we complain 
because the Wise Men are dressed like Doges, or 
because Mary is like a princess of the Republic ? Has 
the Marriage at Cana no message because the lordly 
dishes are borne by Nubians, and Italian hounds 
are held in leash ? Because the master of the feast 
might be Bassanio, because the roof is upheld by 
mighty pillars, and the great table spread with meat 
and drink such as was never heard of in Galilee, 
because he knew less than we do of the customs of 
the Jews, shall we say Paul Veronese was not a 
painter ? No, what inspires is not archaeology, but 
insight, and to have seen that the presence and bless- 
ing of Jesus will make any marriage the joyous feast 
which the splendors of Italy but faintly portrayed, is 
a truer rendering of the story than the dull commen- 
tary that tells us how much a firkin contains. 

That all these controversies have turned us from 
the Bible, so that we do not know it as our fathers 
did, is a fact which serious-minded men much lament ; 
but better days are coming. More and more men in 
the Church are saying the Bible is not infallible, but 
in it is the Spirit of God, " and it is profitable for 
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
which is in righteousness, that the man of God may 
be complete, furnished completely unto every good 
work." 



62 



REVELATION. 



May the teachings of this day lead us to a deeper 
love for the treasure which -we have inherited, writ- 
ten by men with their heart's blood, defended by 
our fathers to the death. Let us use it intelli- 
gently, reverently, thankfully, for it is indeed the 
Word of God. 



V. 



THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 



Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared unto 
thee in the way which thou earnest, hath sent me, that 
thou mayest receive thy sight. — Acts, ix. 17. 

/\ S the service for the second Sunday in Advent 



turns our thoughts to the Bible, so the service 
of to-day turns them to the ministry. 

The difference between a minister and a priest is 
fundamental. The Church of the New Testament 
knows nothing of priests, but it is the continuous 
record of a ministry. And this is not accidental. 
It was as impossible for the Church of Peter and 
Paul to have a priest, as for the Republic of Jefferson 
and Jackson to have a king. It was a difference not 
of names, but of ideas. A priest presupposes sacri- 
fice. The priesthood exists for the purpose of mak- 
ing an atonement ; by its service an offended God is 
made propitious to the sinner. Through his office 
man can draw man to God. On the other hand, 
a ministry presupposes an atonement. Its service is 




64 THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 



the perpetual declaration that God has shown himself 
propitious. Through him man will believe that God 
is seeking him. In other words, one seeks to make 
a desirable condition, the other seeks to open men's 
eyes that they may see the conditions which God has 
made. 

How beautifully this is brought out in the story of 
Saul's enlightenment, from which our text is taken ! 
Saul, on his way to Damascus, is stricken down, 
blinded by the sudden flash of light that smites 
through the clouds of passion which darkened the 
sky of his life. Ananias hears of his state, and 
after a moment's hesitation goes to him, and, when 
he has enlightened him, receives him into the Chris- 
tian Church. Of Ananias we hear no more. But 
we have seen enough. He steps for one moment 
out of the obscurity of his life into the light of his- 
tory, and when he has passed across the stage we 
see in his place the man who shall, in his turn, open 
the eyes of the Church to the meaning of Christ's 
commission. Ananias was not a priest, — he was 
not even an office-bearer in the church at Damascus, 
— he is introduced simply as "a certain disciple." 
The few words which are recorded of his part in the 
interview with Saul are surely not all he said at such 
a momentous time. I think we should rather sup- 
pose that, when Paul told the story to Luke, Luke 



THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 



65 



condensed the teaching of Ananias into what to- 
day we should call the u heads of the discourse." 
" Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared 
unto thee in the way which thou earnest, hath sent 
me. that thou may est receive thy sight." Such words 
as these, leading to such momentous consequences, 
deserve our serious consideration. They describe the 
ministry of the Church. 

" Brother Saul." This was not an address of mere 
civility, it was the welcome into that brotherhood 
which Jesus had made possible through the revela- 
tion of the Fatherhood of God. Saul was not yet a 
brother in the technical sense, he had not yet been 
baptized. But Ananias recognized him as a child 
of God and brother of Jesus Christ. Here it seems 
to me must be the starting point of any effective min- 
istry. The man whose eyes are open must see men 
as God sees them. When the new scholar is brought 
into the school-room the wise teacher does not greet 
it as an idiot, and promise to make it wise. No 
training can do that. The child is greeted as one 
more of that great company of sane and intelligent 
creatures whose joy shall be found in the gradual 
unfolding of its perceptions and the enlargement of 
its powers of reflection. 

We sometimes talk as if baptism created a rela- 
tionship between the soul of the unconscious babe 

5 



66 



THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 



and the Eternal God. Indeed, by some the ser- 
vice of our Church is thought to lend color to this 
theory. But it is a hasty conclusion, at variance 
with the evangelical character of our Church. In 
the Catechism the child is taught that in baptism 
it is " made " the child of God. But look at the 
same use of the word in Romans (v. 19) : " For as 
by one man's disobedience many were made sin- 
ners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made 
righteous." Strange conclusions have been drawn 
from these words as they stand in our English Bibles, 
but if we look at the word tcadio-Tdvcu* we see that it 
means a judicial declaration. It is an authoritative 
statement of a fact. A man has committed a crime. 
The judge announces that fact, and, if you please, 
" makes " him a criminal ; another man is acquitted 
of a crime, and the judge discharges him, and again 
you may say he has made the man innocent ; but in 
neither case has his statement any value unless it con- 
forms to the facts. The child is made the child of God 
because it is his child, and were it not so, nothing 
that man could do — no, nothing that God could do — 
could establish that relationship, which has always 
existed or never can exist. For to say that man is 
the child of God does not mean that sometimes God 
is pleased with this or that man, or that some six thou- 
sand years ago God created man in his own image. 
It means far more than that. It is the assertion that 



THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 67 



God is not an isolated Being, but that whenever God 
was there existed in Him that which is essentially 
human, partially manifested in many men, perfectly 
manifested in the man Christ Jesus. If this be true, 
then it follows that, if any member of humanity is a 
child of God, every member is also. See what such a 
truth implies. I look about this congregation, I rec- 
ognize some of you as communicants of this parish. 
I know that, were the communion to be adminis- 
tered at the close of this service, the large majority 
of you would withdraw. How many of you are mem- 
bers of the Church ? Every one of you ! You may 
not know it, or you may be indifferent to it, but 
the fact remains that every one of you belongs to the 
Church, and the Church belongs to you. From time 
to time we hear of some man who abandons some 
great property and loses himself in the mountains of 
Africa or amid the islands of the South Sea; but that 
does not change the fact that he is a great proprietor, 
and may enter at any time into its possession. So is 
it with your heritage in God. No act of priest or 
bishop can make an ape a member of the Church, 
unless they can make it human. No act of man can 
cast man from the Church, unless he can destroy his 
humanity. For what is the Church ? It is that ideal 
humanity on which God looks, — that ideal humanity 
which lives in perpetual communion with God, — whose 
meat and drink it is to do God's will. Actually, no 



68 



THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 



man has fulfilled that ideal except Jesus Christ. 
Potentially, it is a part of every man. The most 
debased slave driver that to-day lashes the poor cap- 
tives in Equatorial Africa is a Christian ; for before 
the sun goes down his eyes may be opened, and he 
may see the horror of his sin, and the joy of Christ's 
service. Do you say that this is confusing ? I hope 
not. What we commonly and rightly call the Church 
is the great company of faithful people, — those who 
know God as their Father and Jesus as their Saviour. 
But no company has realized the ideal. It belongs 
to humanity, and is an inherent part of your human 
endowment ; and no man is a true man until he en- 
ters upon that life of communion with God which the 
Church witnesses to and strives to realize. You may 
have a priesthood without this conception of human- 
ity, as Israel had. You may have proselytizing, as 
Islam had, denying the brotherhood of man. But a 
ministry is dependent upon the truth that every man 
is God's child, and that you can draw near to him 
and call him Brother. 

We sometimes hear it said that those who take 
such a view of humanity lose all sense of distinction. 
If every man is a child of God, how can we call on 
men to be born anew ? If every man is a Christian, 
who are heathen ? If every man is a member of the 
Church, there is no difference between saints and 
sinners. I do not wonder that men say such things, 



THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 



69 



for they think that God begins to work when they 
become conscious of his working. But the sun must 
light your eyes before you can see it rise. The fact 
exists before we see it. Jesus only is the Son of 
God, for Jesus only has lived as his Son ; but the 
vilest criminal was made by God with a purpose 
which his crime witnesses he has failed to fulfil. 
He is a Christian who dwells in Christ and Christ in 
him. In the most besotted heathen there is a germ 
of love and faith and hope. There have been mo- 
ments when he has moved the members of his spir- 
itual being toward a better life, as the unborn child 
moves in the womb ; he is born in the day when he 
comes forth soul and body into the activity of that 
higher life, to which he truly belongs. Every child 
of man is a part of that ideal humanity which is the 
Church; he is a member from the beginning; he 
realizes his membership when he says, " Father, I 
have sinned and am not worthy to be called thy 
son ; let me serve in thy house." How that great 
truth underlies the whole of the New Testament! 
Jesus sees Nathanael coming to him, and greets him 
as a friend. " How do you know me ? " cries Na- 
thanael. " Long before Philip called you, I saw you." 
" You are persecuting me," said the voice of the Lord 
to Saul. " The pangs and fears and disgust and re- 
morse that have been in your soul since Stephen 
preached have been the spiritual goads with which I 



70 THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 



was turning you into the way of life." " Behold what 
manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, 
that we should be called the sons of God. While we 
were yet sinners Christ died for us," writes St. John. 
" God so loved the world," says our Lord, " that he 
sent his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth 
on him might not perish." What did God love in 
the world ? The cruelty and hate, the lust and 
shame, the envy and strife ? No, lie loved that image 
of Himself, so faint in some lives as to be invisible to 
all save the eye of God, and sent his Son that men 
believing the Son might come to themselves. No act 
of the Son could make God love what it was not in 
his nature to love, but every word and deed, every 
smile and tear, every drop of sweat, and labor of dy- 
ing heart, and groan of fainting breath, bore witness 
to the love of God that passeth understanding. 

Now all this is wrapt up in the words of Ana- 
nias, — "The Lord, even Jesus, who appeared unto 
thee in the way which thou earnest, hath sent me." 
How such words must have thrown light on the 
past! How the present must have seemed to that 
troubled soul to be the natural outcome of the past ! 

I should be sorry to have any of you feel that this 
is an analysis of the experience of Saul, which has 
only a vague reference to the present. I know what it 
was to Saul, because I know that this same message 
is bringing comfort to many souls to-day. What is 



THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 



71 



the reason, my friend, that you do not realize your 
calling ? Is it not that you are not sure whether you 
have been called ? Why do you shrink from ac- 
knowledging yourself a Christian ? Is it not that 
you do not know what the Christian life is to be ? 
0, if there be any such here this morning to whom 
Jesus seems unreal and the Christian life unnatural, 
let him ponder on these words. The rebuke of con- 
science, the voice of sacrifice that called you from 
selfishness, the vision of a noble life, the joy of doing 
good, the sudden upward leap of your spirit at the 
thought that the power which guides the stars and 
holds the earth and governs your life is Love, the 
expansion of your powers as you have stood for a 
moment in the presence of hope and thought of what 
might be, — have these experiences been unreal ? 
Have you not felt then that you were your true self, 
that that was the natural thing to be ? Have you 
not felt that the unnatural thing was to live as a 
stranger to God, to touch your fellow men in every 
part of life, but never as spiritual beings ? Has not 
your spirit stretched its wings of prayer almost with- 
out your volition as you have read or heard or sung, 

" Change and decay in all around I see, 
Thou who changest not, abide with me " ? 

Well, if these or any such experiences as these have 
ever come to you, I tell you, as Ananias told Saul, 
that " the Lord, even Jesus, who appeared unto thee 



72 THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 



in the way which thou earnest, hath sent me." It 
is not a new thing that has come to you. It is the 
working of that same spirit that has rebuked and 
exhorted and comforted you in the past that is 
claiming you to-day. The Christian life is no un- 
natural thing. It is the blossoming out into perfect 
beauty of that which you have known from the be- 
ginning. There has been no time since you began 
to be, that the spirit of Christ has not been with 
you. In fretful infancy and passionate youth, in 
prideful manhood and weak old age, the spirit of 
Jesus has been with you ; and now the Church, that 
portion of humanity which is even dimly conscious 
of its life in God, is sent to you. 

" That thou mayest receive thy sight." Really that 
is all that is needed. One man says, " I see what 
I ought to do, but I have not the power to do it." 
Another says, " I have power, but I do not know 
what I ought to do." The conflict can only be ended 
by entering deeper into the life of the spirit. It is 
not a question of doing, but of being. If a man really 
sees what he is, and who has been with him on the 
way, he will have the vision of what his life ought to 
be, and with that vision will come power. That was 
St. Paul's experience. Years after, when he looked 
back on the great crisis of his life, he wrote : " I was 
not disobedient to the heavenly vision." He had 
power to obey. The man who says, I have power, 



THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 73 



but lack sight, is mistaken. Sight is the source of 
power. I cannot say I have strength to do the work 
of the new year, — I have strength only for the 
moment. The new strength will come with the new 
task. The real cause of spiritual impotence is weak 
sight. If a man truly sees, he will do. Many of us 
see but dimly. There are two objects between which 
our gaze vacillates. I am not sure to which I should 
devote the energy of life. The one which I see most 
clearly will reflect its light upon me, and in that 
light I shall discover that within me which is like it, 
and power will be generated by the contact between 
that which is without and that which is within. 
Sight and power are simultaneous. A man wanders 
aimlessly along the bank of a stream. Suddenly he 
sees some object in the water. He gazes curiously, 
without sense of responsibility or thrill of emotion. 
He looks, he sees a drowning child, and instantly the 
thrill of life runs through him and he casts himself 
in to save the child. The power was generated by 
the sight. The artist looks on the block of marble 
and sees nothing but the resisting stone ; but as he 
looks, little by little he sees the figure of beauty hid- 
den beneath. With the sight comes the tingling 
sense of power till the ringing chisel hews down the 
prison walls, and lets the spiritual thing stand forth in 
its enduring beauty. All through life it is the same. 
If any man could see the souls of God's little ones 



74 



THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 



drowning in sin and degradation, he would take no 
thought of his life if only he might save them. If any 
man could see the image of God's Son hidden in the 
gross sensualism or hard cynicism of men's lives, he 
would thrill to set it free. If any man could see 
himself and God, he would have the power of an 
endless life. 

To produce this result is the object of the ministry. 
They are sent to call every man Brother, to witness 
that God has been with him on the path of life, — 
that the Christian life is not a strange thing, but 
the fulfilment of that of which every man has had 
some experience, — in a word, that men may receive 
their sight. 

What is the ministry ? Whose duty is this? These 
are the questions men are perpetually asking. Why 
do we not turn it the other way, and ask, Whose privi- 
lege is this ? And instantly the answer comes, it is 
the privilege of the Church, those conscious of their 
own enlightenment. It cannot be confined to any 
technical ministry of the clergy. These have their 
place and work in the Church, but they neither con- 
stitute the Church nor have a monopoly of its privi- 
leges. The perpetual minister is the Church, and 
every disciple partakes of that ministry, and, if he 
does not exercise it, misses the meaning of his 
membership. Every member should be like a star, 



THE MINISTRY OF THE CHURCH. 75 



which receives and transmits light. That was the 
prophet's vision, " They that turn many to righteous- 
ness shall shine as the stars forever." What life can 
be compared to it for dignity, for interest, for joy ? 
St. Paul writes to Philemon that he owes him his own 
self. But for Paul's ministry Philemon would have 
lived till the earthquake shook Colossae, and never 
known what he himself was. Paul owed himself to 
Ananias. You and I owe ourselves to some minister 
of light, — to noble father or patient mother, to loving 
wife, perhaps to dying child. Who owes himself to 
us ? Whose eyes have we opened to the love of God, 
the beauty of Christ, the joy of the Christian life ? 

If men do not ask themselves such questions, is it 
strange that we should hear from time to time that 
the ministry lacks men ? Let the Church realize its 
ministry, and men will break forth from her ranks and 
say, I cannot be content till all my life is given to the 
work which fathers and mothers, teachers and friends, 
are doing. That time is drawing near. The Apostolic 
ministry is asserting itself in the Church. The Soci- 
ety of Christian Endeavor, the Epworth League, the 
St. Andrew's Brotherhood, show that the Church is 
awaking again to its privileges and its opportunities. 

When the tide has reached its flood, there will be 
joy in heaven and earth. There will be Light, and 
in that light will be known the wisdom of God, the 
love of Jesus, and the power of the Spirit. May God 
give us grace to labor for the advent of that day ! 



VI. 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON. 

And he took a little child, and set Mm in the midst of 
them. — St. Mark, ix. 36. 

TF we were asked to choose the one act of Jesus's 
life which was the most significant expression of 
his teaching, I think we should choose that touching 
scene, when, coming into the house at Capernaum, he 
turned to his disciples and said, " What were ye 
reasoning in the way ? But they held their peace, 
for they had disputed one with another in the way, 
who was the greatest. . . . And he took a little child, 
and set him in the midst of them ; and taking him 
in his arms, he said unto them, Whosoever shall re- 
ceive one of such little children in my name receiv- 
eth me ; and whosoever receiveth me, receiveth not 
me, but him that sent me." This, it seems to me, is 
the act most significant of the meaning of Christ's 
coming ; for what he was saying to those men of evil 
passions was, If you wish to be great, you must 
be humble ; if you wish to be divine, you must be 
human. The true human spirit is the child spirit. 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON. 



77 



It will lead you to me, and my spirit is my father's. 
The unity of God and man has not been broken. I 
am the Mediator, revealing to you the path by which 
you may pass from the innocence of childhood to 
the heroism of manhood, and from the victory over 
the world to the glory of the Father. 

Compare this act with the words in which our 
Lord tells us the secret of his working : " The Son 
can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the 
Father doing ; for what tilings soever he doeth, these 
the Son also doeth in like manner." When the Son 
acted his great parable at Capernaum, he only did 
what the Father had done on the first Christmas 
day, when in the midst of the warring world he too 
" set a little child." 

" When Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, in 
the days of Herod the king, there came wise men 
from the East." There were no wise men in the 
West at that time who would not have said that God's 
last appeal to his children was foolishness. That the 
righteous must bring the lawless to a better life, the 
Roman Empire believed as well as we. Some men 
believed it on the ground of self-preservation, but 
others believed it because they recognized that they 
had a duty which they owed the world. And it is that 
sense of duty which dignifies the busts of the Emper- 
ors, and hides their lust, and tempers their cruelty ; 



78 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON. 



but they never dreamed that this duty could be done 
except by the exercise of force. But God revealed 
on Christmas day that the world was to be ruled by 
the King of saints, — that meekness, not force, was 
to be the instrument. Caesar thrashed men with his 
iron flail till they fell helpless at his feet. But this 
little child was the Prince of Peace, who was to con- 
quer by disarming men. This is the key to the 
Christmas story. The patient beasts bow their heads 
at the feet of the babe who should suffer far more 
than they had done ; the wise men bring their gifts 
to the little child who is the secret of the universe. 
The shepherds hear the angels' song because the 
child of the peasant woman is the Son of God who 
shall open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. 
At the manger of Bethlehem are met the creation 
groaning and travailing in pain, the wise men weary 
with the search for truth, the shepherds, poor, for- 
gotten, unknown, and despised, and on them smiles 
the little child, lying in the foreground of human 
life, while the background is filled with the mystery 
of the power and wisdom and love of God. And 
these are to be reconciled. The human is not to 
be destroyed, but redeemed ; sinners are not to be 
crushed, but converted ; the enemies of God are not 
to be trampled under foot, but disarmed. Can it be 
done ? If we stand again by the manger, it may be 
we shall hear the voice that spake to the prophet : 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON. 



79 



" Not by might nor by power, but by my spirit, the 
spirit of the little child, saith the Lord of hosts." 

What is the spirit of the little child ? First of all, 
it is the spirit of trust. It begins to manifest itself 
in that willingness to come to us and be caressed, 
which is not only one of the most attractive traits of 
childhood, but also the doorway by which we may 
enter into the child's life and impart to it such wis- 
dom as we have learned. The child trusts us, and we 
fondle it, and so reveal to it our love. If that spirit 
is encouraged, the child will tell his joys and sorrows, 
and so make of his parent his best friend. And at 
last the child will open its mind to the father's teach- 
ing, and through its trust in his wisdom receive what 
the father has to impart. That, we would all say, is 
the natural relation between a father and his child, — 
openness of mind on the one hand, and inexhaustible 
love on the other. Suspicion, distrust, indifference, 
these are unnatural, they come with sin. The natu- 
ral childlike spirit is trustful. That is the spirit 
which God revealed on Christmas day. The babe 
of Mary knew no more of God than any little child 
that was born this morning. But it loved Mary, and 
it believed in Joseph, and it smiled on Simeon and 
Anna, and rejoiced the hearts of the shepherds. 
Not because it was different from other children, but 
because it was like them, a dear little baby who trusted 
those that loved him. 



80 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON. 



" Ah !" we say of our children, " if that could only 
continue, if we could keep them little!" Mary and 
Joseph felt the same. " Son," said the mother to the 
growing boy, " why hast thou thus dealt with us ? " 
The boy's answer was wonderful : " I am about my fa- 
ther's business." The spirit of trust had not departed 
from Jesus, only it had a new object. It never failed. 
It was filled with awful doubt. It was lifted high by 
great prosperity. It was shaken by sorrow. It was 
racked by suffering, — it was faced with shame and 
death. It never failed. " Father, into thy hands I 
commend my spirit," was the outpouring of the same 
trust that had slept on Mary's breast. 

I must pass over many things in the child spirit 
— friendliness and wonder, the angel of hope that 
spreads its wings to keep beside the dancing feet — 
that I may speak of joy. There comes a time in the 
lives of most of us when joy seems to be the exception. 
We expect worry and disappointment, pain and loss. 
But it is not so with the child. Those things are to it 
unnatural, and it puts them from it. We go into some 
house where death has come ; the elders weep, but the 
children laugh or make a poor little effort to keep 
quiet, for death has no meaning to them. The nurse 
tells them that the father's laugh will never echo 
through the house again, that the mother will never 
stand beside the bed ; but the child does not believe 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON. 



81 



it. " Mortality is swallowed up of life." We, we 
who call ourselves Christians, pity the children's ig- 
norance, and say it is because they cannot understand 
that they do not feel their loss, that their ignorance 
saves them. No, my friends. Their ignorance protects 
them doubtless, as the darkness protects the flowers ; 
but it does not beget that faith in the power of life. 
The child's spirit is the perpetual witness that life 
is the reality and death the accident, that joy is the 
atmosphere in which the soul should live, not sorrow. 
This was the life of the Man of sorrows. No joy 
of self-indulgence can be compared with what Jesus 
knew through doing the will of God. No thrill of 
prosperity was like the glory on the mount when 
Jesus heard the Eternal say, " Thou art my beloved 
Son." No satisfaction of success was like the joy the 
Saviour knew when he saw the travail of his soul, and 
was satisfied with it, in the day he died to save the 
world. The joy of the little child whose spirit leaped 
up at the splashing of the water in Nazareth's foun- 
tain, whose soul drank deep of the glories of the 
world when Hermon's top shone in the Syrian sun, 
did not fail, but found new sources of blessedness in 
the tears of the repentant woman and the cry of the 
lost soul to whom he showed the Father's house. 
The object of our faith and hope and joy must change, 
but the true human spirit can mount as on Jacob's 
ladder even to the throne of God. 

6 



82 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON. 



The spirit of trust and the spirit of joy, — that is 
our heritage. There is not a querulous and soured 
woman of our acquaintance, not a suspicious and 
disappointed man sitting moody in his selfish house 
to-day, who did not begin life with that divine gift to 
the human soul, the spirit of the little child. We all 
began as heirs of the kingdom of heaven. Which of 
us has not at some time wasted his substance ? To- 
day is the feast of the prodigal son. In Jesus human- 
ity came to itself. In Him we know ourselves as 
sons of God. That is the gospel of Christmas, but 
the Christmas exhortation is to place the little child 
in the midst. 

How is that to be done? Look away from our 
homes for a moment, where all is bright and where 
plenty reigns, and think of the cold and hunger and 
nakedness, — think of the army of men and the crowd 
of women who fill our jails. Listen to the deep mur- 
mur of discontent. Consider what it means that this 
service in which we are engaged men mock at, and 
say that the church is for the rich, or at least for the 
well to do, — that our money is protected by the 
law, but gotten unjustly, — that we say we love God 
whom we have not seen, while we hate our brother 
whom we have seen. I know how unjust much of 
this is. I know that many — all of you — would suf- 
fer no man to want if you could help him. I know 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON. 



83 



how much is done at this Christmastidc to relieve 
poverty and comfort the sick that the world knows 
nothing of. But I know also, my friends, that the 
disease is deeper than many of us suppose, and that it 
cannot be cured by almsgiving. The misery of it is, 
that no one can tell us how to prevent the evils of the 
day. The poor may not be growing poorer, — I do not 
believe they are, — but they are growing more help- 
less. I have no scheme to offer, but I would bear wit- 
ness on Christ's birthday against the false doctrine of 
the day, which says the way to help the world is to 
get possession of the world, and then you can do good 
with it. It is our great temptation. Resist it. When 
you enter again to-morrow into your industrial life, 
place a little child in the midst. Let the spirit of 
trust in your Father show itself in your work. Say to 
yourselves, when you are tempted to grasp all that 
your hands can hold, " The Lord will provide." Let 
those with whom you do the work of life see that 
you are free from fear and anxiety, and the panic will 
subside. You did not rush this morning to seize your 
gifts. Do not rush to-morrow to seize the world's 
wealth, but take your blessings as God's gift, and then 
you will use them for His glory. 

Place a little child in the midst of your social life. 
Cultivate the spirit of* friendliness, and cast out the 
spirit of suspicion. A child may grow suspicious, but 
it is unnatural. Almost any child you pass on the 



84 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON. 



street will answer your greeting with a smile, and, if 
you care to ask, will tell you what was in its stock- 
ing. Well, let more of that spirit come into our 
lives. Try to believe that the slights of life are acci- 
dental, that men mean well. Be ready to forgive. It 
is not always easy, but if you remember whose child 
you are and whose child he is who has wounded you, 
it can be done. what a merry winter this might be, 
if all our parties were children's parties ! if we went 
here and there to rejoice and make joyful, to forget 
our tasks and punishments and bruises, and make 
the most of human friendship in the household of 
God! 

But, above all, set the little child in the midst of 
your own hearts. I look in your faces, and I know 
that our Father desires the peace and joy of each one 
of you as you desire them for your children. One 
man fails to grasp them because he is held back by 
some evil habit, and then cannot reach them because 
he is sick with sin ; but there are many more who 
are filled with the spirit of discontent. They moan, 
"The circumstances of my life shut me in, and 
hinder me from doing what I wish to do." No doubt, 
my friends. But there are no circumstances which 
keep you from being what God wishes you to be. 
You dream of some great work that you would like 
to do for God and man, — you are thwarted in your 
plan. Well, now see if you cannot be something 



A CHRISTMAS SERMON. 



85 



better than you have been. " He that ruleth his own 
spirit is greater than he that taketh a city." The 
man who submits to the trials and disappointments 
of life patiently and cheerfully is doing more for God 
and man than he who builds a monument of his 
energy. 

It may seem a strange thing to say to a Christian 
congregation, but I can think of no better thing to 
say to you on Christmas day than this. Let us try 
for to-day to be Christians. The Christian spirit is 
the child spirit that looks to God as its Father, and 
is strengthened ; thinks of itself as his child, and is 
comforted ; looks on each man as His child and its 
brother, and loves. And he that receives that spirit 
receives Christ, and he that receives him receives 
not him, but Him that sent him, God. So that the 
divine life that is in us may be born; so that the 
incarnation of God may be accomplished in our lives 
this day. God give you, my dear people, that great 
Christmas gift which exceeds all that we can desire. 



VII. 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 

The parched ground shall become a pool. 

Isaiah, xxxv. 7. 

HOW much of the Bible is unintelligible to us be- 
cause we have no familiarity with the scenery 
amid which it was written ! How much more these 
words must have meant to the men who first heard 
them than they can mean to us who have never seen 
a desert ! For the picture that the prophet had in 
mind was of a caravan travelling across the desert, 
and his hearers had many of them, doubtless, formed 
a part of such a company, and knew what it meant to 
plod on over the fiery sand, hour after hour, to hear 
the wail of the children for water, to see the wife's 
strength begin to fail, to hear the deep cursings of 
the men that had not bargained to suffer, and to feel 
their own strength unequal to the task before them. 
And then, suddenly, to see afar off the shimmering 
of the water, and by anticipation to slake the thirst, 
to see the children revive and hear them laugh, to 
note the color return to the face of those they loved, 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



87 



to hear no more cursing, but thanksgiving, from the 
men, to see the wearied beasts lift up their drooping 
heads, and all take courage for the next stage of the 
pilgrimage, and then — to find it was a mirage, an 
illusion ; that the very heat which caused the tongue 
to cleave to the roof of the mouth had heated the 
burning sand and parched the ground, so that its rays 
meeting with the direct rays of the sun caused the 
light to lie like a shadow over the burning sand, and 
make them believe that their salvation was near. 

I say that to you and me it is hard to understand 
the full meaning of this prophecy, and in our ver- 
sion it had almost been hidden away ; for the real 
translation of these words, my friends, is not " The 
parched ground shall become a pool," but " The 
mirage shall become a pool." 

The thing that you have thought that you should 
see, the thing that you believed would be the satis- 
faction of your life, the sight of which had brought 
new vigor to your limbs and strengthened your mind 
for the onward journey of the pilgrimage, that, says 
the prophet, shall become true. The mirage, the illu- 
sion of your life, shall become a reality. So should 
we translate the words, " The parched ground shall 
become a pool." 

What has been the mirage that humanity has seen 
in its journey ? No one sermon could begin to give the 



88 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



answer to that question. But the prophet enters into 
certain details that we might glance at this morning, 
I trust for our profit. 

The first thing that such men would want would be 
the slaking of their thirst, the satisfaction of some 
desire. So he tells them, The mirage shall become a 
pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. The 
thing you desire you shall have. 

Now, might we not write all history on that text ? 
Might we not go back to the beginning of the history 
of man, and see that it has been a series of efforts 
succeeded by failure to gain satisfaction ? Ts not that 
the history of every human being ? We have all of 
us, my friends, as humanity at large, we have all of us 
been struggling from the beginning to be satisfied. 
And the soul has said to itself, If I can once lay hold 
upon that particular thing, then T shall be satisfied. 
It may be wealth, it may be honor, it may be physical 
strength, it may be popularity, — what you will. The 
soul has set before it some definite aim, and said, If 
I can reach that point, then my thirst will be slaked 
and my soul will be satisfied. 

And we have reached it, but we were not satisfied. 
We found that the same want began all over again ; 
year after year, decade after decade, generation after 
generation, men have seen a mirage, and said to 
themselves, If I could reach that, my soul would be 
satisfied. 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



89 



Many a man, grown old and weary with repeated 
failure, has said to his soul, in the secret communion 
of his own heart, u What is it that thou dost desire, 
my soul ? " With that sort of double personality 
of which every man is conscious, a man says to him- 
self, " I have labored for you, I have given up time 
and thought and energy and strength to the heaping 
up of riches ; I have done this thing by means that, 
in the secret of my own heart, I do hate and abhor, 
but I did it in order that you, my soul, which kept 
urging me on, might at last be satisfied. And you 
are not satisfied. I have made a home. I have 
gathered about me those I love. I have increased 
knowledge. I have widened the circle of my friend- 
ships. But I am not satisfied. Still there is some- 
thing that does not slake the thirst of my soul." 

And while these men so long ago thought as we do 
now, one man stood up in the midst of them all, and 
shouted aloud, as if it were a great discovery, " My 
soul is athirst for God." That is the trouble with hu- 
manity. It is athirst for God, and it has supposed 
that it could satisfy its longings with the things that 
are touched and seen. And the prophet, knowing the 
long struggle and the repeated failure, looked in the 
faces of these men, and said, " The mirage shall be- 
come a pool," your satisfaction shall be met. 

But such a prophecy as that called men's minds 
away from themselves to the thought of others. In- 



90 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



dividual salvation, if it could be brought to any one of 
us here to-day, would not be enough. The woman 
who knows that she stands in the light of the love of 
God, but that her husband is in the outer darkness, 
the man who knows that he has led an upright and 
true life, but that his son is turning away to wick- 
edness, cannot be satisfied. We are bound one to 
another. Those that have built the tombs of the 
prophets got no benefit from those tombs themselves. 
They only witnessed that they were part of the great 
past. And all that have engaged in the work of 
building the monuments which would perpetuate the 
fame of the present, or erected works which would be 
for the benefit of those that come after, have been de- 
claring that no man could find the satisfaction of his 
soul in the completion of his own individual life, but 
that, knowing himself to be a part of the great whole, 
he must have that before him all the time which would 
remind him of his glorious past and his still more 
glorious future. 

Men wandering as individuals have felt themselves 
lost in a desert, and have said, " that there were 
some way in which my feet could stand that I might 
see the foot-prints of those that have gone before me, 
that I might know that I am on the track across this 
waste that others have followed before me, and feel 
myself a part of the company of those who knew 
whence they came and whither they are going ! " 



THE 'MIRAGE A REALITY. 



91 



That has been the wish and hope of multitudes of 
men who never knew the answer to the desire of 
their souls. 

Hear the word of the prophet : " And a highway 
shall be there, and a way, and the wayfaring man, 
though a fool, shall not err therein." There shall 
come, says the prophet, a day when in the desert a 
highway shall be built, and men shall know that they 
are not wandering in this trackless waste, with no 
knowledge of the home from which they have come, 
and no understanding of the end and object of the 
pilgrimage. But their feet shall stand on the way 
that others have travelled before them, and they shall 
hear the voice of the past saying to them, This is the 
way, walk ye in it. And walking in that path, united 
with the great company of pilgrims who have been 
through the same experiences, known the same sor- 
rows, been beckoned on by the same mirage, they 
shall have strength and hope and comfort in the con- 
sciousness of this great companionship of the redeemed 
who walk on the highway of their God. 

Again, we look back over the long history of the 
race, and we find that something else is needed. 

If we could see to-day the camp in which the earli- 
est forms of civilization were gathered, before cities 
were built, or roads were laid, or empires dreamed of, 
we should find that the camp encircled itself at night 



92 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



with fire, while without were the beasts roaring for 
their prey, causing the little children to nestle close 
to the father who could protect them, causing the 
women to shudder, and even strong men to ask them- 
selves, May the fiery barrier be broken down, and the 
beasts that are outside 'the camp invade us and de- 
stroy what we love ? 

0, how these men and women and children must 
have looked at one another, and said, Will it ever 
come to pass that there shall be a wall built that will 
keep out the beasts ? Will it ever be that men will 
dwell under anything stronger than the black tent, 
the skin of the beast that we have stretched on 
poles ? 

the illusion, the mirage, as it must have seemed 
to them, of stately cities and strong walls, and beasts 
forever banished from the land ! But the prophet said, 
"No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast; they 
shall not be found there, but the redeemed shall 
walk there." The day will come when the people 
shall know that they are protected, when fear shall 
be taken away from them. 

The fear of what ? Of beasts ? Not that alone, 
for when the beasts were banished from the land, there 
was man to be afraid of. And the children said, Who 
will protect us from the enemy ? And the father said, 
I will. And then the father came to die. And he 
rolled despairing eyes and cried, Ay, but who will 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



93 



protect me now ? I must go into the unseen land, 
and face the shadows that I now behold. Who will 
protect me now ? And the priests in every land 
stood by those men, and said, I will protect you. 
And the priest said to himself, Who will protect 
me, — not from the beast, not from men, not from 
the spirits that may haunt me, not from hell, but 
from sin? Who will keep me from the corruption of 
sin, — worse than any evil that the world has ever 
seen or dreamed of ? Will the day ever come when 
asking who will save me from sin and make me what 
I desire to be, there will stand by me one who will 
say, I will ? The prophet said, The mirage shall 
become a pool. That which seems impossible shall 
surely come to pass. 

Once more. On the journey much was lost, much 
was suffered, much endured. And the pilgrim who 
stepped out so blithely at the beginning of the march 
was found at the end to be an old man, his head 
whitened, and all over his face and body written the 
history of the long conflict, the hope deferred that 
maketh the heart sick, the disappointment and weari- 
ness and sorrow, the hatred of those whom he had 
tried to help along the journey, the fear in his own 
heart that it was all an illusion. 

So at the last there was something more needed for 
these weary men. Was all that had been dropped on 
the journey to be gathered up again ? Was all that 



94 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



had been suffered to have its reward ? The prophet 
said, The mirage shall become a pool. What you 
have dreamed of joy and peace and glory shall be 
your portion. For " the ransomed of the Lord shall 
return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting 
joy upon their heads." All that you have dreamed of, 
says the prophet, of joy and peace and happiness and 
glory, the company of those you have loved and lost, 
the earnest desire for purity, the longing for compan- 
ionship, the satisfaction of the soul, — all these things, 
says the prophet, shall be yours. The mirage, the 
illusion, shall become a reality. 

These words were spoken thousands of years ago. 
What I would like to ask you is, How shall we read 
them to-day ? Have they become true ? Is it true 
that the thirsty soul has been satisfied ? Is it true 
that there is a highway in the desert, and that the 
wayfaring man need not err therein ? Is it true that 
no lion is there, nor any ravenous beast, but that in 
the consciousness of safety men are making their 
journey ? Is it true that the redeemed do return and 
come to Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads, 
and that sorrow and sighing flee away ? 

My friends, if you and I, with the experience that 
we have had of life, and the knowledge of what life 
is to-day, with all that there is to its disadvantage, 
with all the disappointments, with all that makes up 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



95 



the weariness and the burden of life, — if you and I 
could have stood in the presence of the people that 
heard the prophet speak, and have told them, out of 
the experience of our inmost hearts, what we feel and 
know, there would have gone up one shout from that 
assembled host, and they would have said, " The Mes- 
siah has come. The things of which the prophets 
spoke have come to pass, if the things that you say 
are true." 

Are these things true ? Why, look into your own 
experiences, and think for a moment, not of your sor- 
rows nor trials nor temptations, not of the weari- 
ness and disappointment of life, but of its glory, and 
see if what the prophet said be not true. See if it 
is not true that things that in that day seemed an 
illusion are to-day the realities of life. See if what 
Jesus said be not true : " I tell you that many proph- 
ets and kings have desired to see those things which 
ye see, and have not seen them ; and to hear those 
things which ye hear, and have not heard them." 

What have we seen, and what have we heard ? 
Why, my friends, multitudes of men and women, 
some of them in this church this morning, know 
what it is to have the satisfaction of the soul, God 
with us ; the knowledge that our sins have been 
pardoned, that they shall never rise up in judgment 
to meet us ; the assurance of God's undying love ; 
the knowledge of the sympathy of Him who was cru- 



96 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



cified for us ; the consciousness that God is about us 
and by us and in us, — is the pool at which our thirsty 
souls do drink. Is it not so ? Has it not been found 
so by many a soul to whom I speak to-day ? 

And the way. Have we not that way ? There are 
men and women who are lost, men and women who 
are wandering through this world, not knowing where 
they came from nor whither they are going. But is it 
true of those who have been drawn to the company of 
Jesus Christ? Are their feet not upon the way that 
leads to eternal life ? Can we not look back over 
this way of the Church of the living God, and know 
ourselves one with the company of those that first 
preached God, of those that suffered persecution, of 
those that redeemed Western Europe, of those that 
stood in the fires of the Reformation, of those that 
have preached in this land, and of those that are 
to-day the descendants of the blessed company of 
faithful people ? Are we not one of them ? Is not 
that the patent of nobility that every Christian carries 
within his own life ? 

Who would give it up ? Those who do not know 
it think that it is a mirage. Those who know noth- 
ing of it wonder why Christian people gather about 
the table of the Lord, kneeling side by side, declar- 
ing themselves the disciples of Jesus Christ, and 
gather week after week to hear his word and to sing 
his praise. They wonder why it is done. But those 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



97 



of you who have entered into the company of the dis- 
ciples of the Master know why it is done. You know 
that your feet are on the highway, and though you 
may be a fool in many things, yet you shall not err 
from the way of salvation. It is the way that comes 
from God and leads to God, the way of Jesus Christ 
the Saviour. 

And protection. It is hard for us to picture to our- 
selves what it must have been for the camp to hear 
the roar of the beasts. It is equally hard for us to 
picture to ourselves what it must have been for the 
Church of the early days and of mediaeval times to 
gather with the belief that all the forest was full 
of demons and evil spirits. It is hard for us to un- 
derstand the meaning of the prayer that carries us 
back and unites us with those that have gone before : 
" Save us, Lord, from sudden death. Grant, Lord, 
that in our last hour we may not, for any pains of 
death, fall from thee." It goes back to the time when 
men were taken out suddenly from their homes, and, 
in the awful agony of death by burning, sometimes 
fell from Jesus Christ. 

I am glad the words remain, that they may help us 
to lift up our hearts to God and thank him for the 
protection of his people. We are not afraid of death, 
for Jesus died. We are not afraid of hell, for he 
descended into hell. We are not afraid of God nor 
of God's judgment, for it is the judgment of a father. 

7 



98 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



We are not afraid of anything but sin, and says the 
Apostle, "Sin shall not have dominion over you. 
You are not under the law; you are under grace." 
Christ is personally helping every one of us. What 
can separate us from the love of God ? Can death ? 
Can sickness ? Can sorrow ? Nothing can separate 
us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ. 

Then what follows ? Why, death and life and all 
things are yours. You are the kings, and these 
things that you have feared are your servants, and 
every one of them can be used. Physical sickness, 
mental weariness, the sorrowful heart, the failing 
.limb, the dying breath, ay, the experiences that 
shall come when this life is over, are the servants 
that belong to the kings that God has redeemed 
through Christ. Nothing shall separate us from his 
love. We have no cause for fear. " No lion shall 
be there, nor any ravenous beast, but the redeemed 
shall walk there." 

And if I have not wearied you, may I say one word 
more ? 

The promise and prophecy of joy, — have we not 
known it ? It is not true that sorrow and sighing 
have left the world, but has not the sorrow and has 
not the sighing fled away from you, as you have en- 
tered into the communion of your God ? Have you 
not come to Zion with everlasting joy upon your 
head, as you have remembered, not the special things 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



99 



for which you ought to be thankful, but as it has 
been borne in upon you that you belong to God and 
God to you, and that the glory and beauty of life is 
not in doing God's will as a hard law, but in doing- 
God's will because you have come to love God's will ? 
I do not say we live that way. I say that every 
Christian man and woman has at some moment in 
his life, perhaps in the hour of his deepest bereave- 
ment, come to Zion with everlasting joy upon his 
head. 

My friends, the prophecy is not to come true ; the 
prophecy has come true. What the prophet said was 
that these things should come, — the satisfaction of 
human want, the consciousness that the feet were on 
the everlasting way, the protection from all evil, 
and the everlasting joy of Zion in the days of the 
Messiah. 

And now if you ask me whether this prophecy 
rests upon any principle, and whether its fulfilment 
has got anything back of it but the individual hope 
that it may be true, I answer you, Yes, it has. It 
has the revelation of God in the incarnation of Jesus 
Christ that man and God are one. And because man 
and God are one, therefore the mirage that human- 
ity has beheld is the reflection of the refracted rays 
of the will of God passing through the medium of 
human life. And every man who has purified him- 
self is, in his own day and according to his capacity, 



100 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



some sort of revelation, not of his own will, but of 
God's will revealed through him. 

Suppose every one of us here this morning were to 
write upon the walls of this church the inmost wish 
of his heart. How many of us would be willing that 
they should stand there and all turn and read what 
we desire ? Many, many a thing we would blot out 
rather than any one should know it. Therefore it is 
not yours. But the inmost desire of your soul, the 
thing that really deep down in your own heart you 
want, — that, my friends, shall be yours. " The mi- 
rage shall become a pool." The satisfaction of your 
soul you shall know, because you are God's and God 
is yours. 

Is not that what St. John meant, when he wrote, 
in that wonderful fifth chapter of his first Epistle, 
"And this is the confidence that we have in him, 
that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he 
heareth us : and if we know that he hear us, whatso- 
ever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that 
we desired of him " ? Because your will, your prayer, 
purified from selfishness, is no longer your will or 
your prayer. " The spirit helpeth our infirmities," 
and " maketh intercession for us with groanings which 
cannot be uttered." It is the divine life in us, pass- 
ing through us, that causes the mirage to appear in 
our pilgrimage. Man's will projecting itself on the 
future shimmers above the burning sand, but it could 



THE MIRAGE A REALITY. 



101 



not be were it not that it had mingled with the rays 
of the light of the will of God. 

The prophecy has come true, and yet it is as noth- 
ing compared with that which shall be in the day 
when we know him more than we know him now. 

What should be our attitude ? One of unbounded 
thankfulness that he has seen fit to reveal himself to 
us as our Father, and ourselves as his sons. One of 
unflinching courage, one of undying hope ; for every 
glorious vision that humanity has had upon its pil- 
grimage of personal joy, of larger truth, of nobler 
civilization, of human glory, shall, in God's good 
time, be fulfilled, because it is not the will of man, 
it is the will of God. 



VIII. 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



Seeing him who is invisible. — Hebrews, xi. 27. 
HESE words remind us of many of the sayings 



of Jesus. They are paradoxical. They are 
apparently contradictory. How is it possible to see 
that which is invisible, — to see that which cannot be 
seen ? Let us ask ourselves, then, first of all, What 
is sight? 

We speak of it as if it were a very simple thing. 
There is no one thing of which we are more sure than 
that we see an object which is before our face. And 
yet, when we come to look into it, we find that it is a 
very complicated process. In the first place, it is me- 
chanical. You and I see simply because light has 
caused a reflection to be cast from some given object 
upon the retina of the eye ; and there it is, photo- 
graphed, as we say. It is a purely mechanical pro- 
cess. It is the work of light. 

Now think how many objects there are imprinted 
at a given moment on the background of the eye by 
this mechanical process of sight. But together with 




SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



103 



it goes a spiritual act, the fixing of the attention. 
For out of this great multitude of objects crowded 
upon the minute canvas of which we speak, the mind 
fixes its attention upon one, and declares that it 
sees it. 

You stand side by side with your friend under the 
sky at night, and he says, See that wonderful star. 
And you look ; you turn this way and that way, and 
and at last you say, Ah ! I see. What does that 
mean ? Does it mean that in the moment when you 
declare that you behold, — that then the image is im- 
printed upon the eye ? Not so. The image was 
there ; all that the light reflected was painted upon 
the background of the eye ; and you saw the very 
moment that you fixed your attention upon that 
one particular object which your friend desired you 
to see. 

Think, then, what a wonderful process it is that 
is going on all the time, this manifestation of objects 
by the power of light. The baby opens its eyes, and 
what is imprinted there ? The light touches Mount 
Washington, and it stoops to enter under the baby's 
brow. The myriad waves that dance at sea reduce 
themselves to tiny specks, and are painted on this 
little canvas. The child does not see them, yet they 
are all there. The great picture of human life, ani- 
mals and trees, far-stretching fields, men and women 
walking, little children playing, clouds sailing over 



104 SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



head, the bending of the trees as they whisper to one 
another, — all these things are on the background of 
the baby's eye. What does the little one see ? It 
does not see, properly speaking, anything until the 
day when it has the power to fix its attention upon 
one particular object, and, singling it out from all 
the rest, deliver itself up to the contemplation of its 
meaning. 

See, then, what this thing means. We speak of 
seeing objects. You say, I see you speaking to me 
now. I say, I see you listening. I think that I see 
the church in which we are. I think that I saw the 
trees under which we walked this morning on our 
way to church. I think that I shall see the stars 
to-night. I think that I shall behold men walking 
in these streets. Yet none of these things is true. 
We see nothing. We see in every case an image of 
an object that we declare we see. 

Properly speaking, everything is in itself invisible. 
It has no power of making itself seen. We have no 
power of seeing it. We think that sight is the one 
sense that goes out from the human body and deals 
with objects apart from self. But it is not so. It is 
in the truest sense the most internal of the senses. 
It brings all these various things to itself, and, look- 
ing on their image, expresses an opinion about their 
size and form. Note that, I beg. Properly speak- 
ing, I say, all things are invisible ; and all that you 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



105 



and I have ever seen was the image of an object 
that had been revealed to us by the interpreter, 
light. Thus we stand : there is an object, an image 
of which light reveals within us. When we think 
of the image, we say we see the object, and so, in 
a sense, we do. But, strictly speaking, the object is 
invisible. 

How, then, can we know the reality of any one of 
these objects that we declare we see ? There is 
nothing that we are more certain of than the exist- 
ence of objects which we declare we see. Yet upon 
what does this certainty rest ? Seeing nothing, see- 
ing only an image that is reflected upon the back- 
ground of the eye, contemplating that image, we 
come to a conclusion about its form, or color, or size. 
Yet how can we be sure that any one of these objects 
answers really to the image of it that we are con- 
templating? We cannot be sure. It is in such a 
moment as this that we feel the profound truth of 
the saying of Paul, " We walk not by sight, but by 
faith." We believe, by a conviction so strong that 
nothing can shake it, that there is a reality answer- 
ing to these images which we contemplate. But be- 
yond that no man can go. We simply believe, and, 
believing, we declare we know. 

So, then, the paradox of the text is the statement 
of a very simple experience and of a very profound 
truth. We have the power of seeing the invisible. 



106 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



And now consider the influence of the vision of 
the invisible. Here is a man vexed and wearied with 
the tiring routine of life, worn and fretted by petty 
cares, frightened and oppressed by a great anxiety, 
weary, despondent, hopeless ; and he wanders out 
into the fields. He sees the flowers growing on 
every side. He hears the birds sing from the thicket. 
He notes the power and glory of the oak. He stands 
under the shadow of the mountain. He looks across 
the great expanse of the sea. And this sight of the 
image of invisible nature brings to his soul a sense 
of peace, and power, and comfort. 

What an experience that has been ! How it has 
grown and expanded ! How it has been illuminated 
by the poets ! How it has been preached by the 
painters ! How it has been told from lip to lip 
through all the ages, since the Greeks stood by the 
laughing sea, and the Jews looked up to the moun- 
tains about Jerusalem and remembered the encir- 
cling power of God, — since the Swiss peasants felt 
stronger and freer on their mountain side, and the 
men of the West felt their souls expanding under 
the influence of the wide stretch of their prairies! 

So it has been through all the history of mankind. 
The seeing of invisible nature has brought comfort, 
and a sense of power, and a sense of dignity, and a 
larger hope, that have been the glory and the com- 
fort of mankind. 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



107 



And it has not been only in the presence of the 
scene which specially attracted them, that these men 
have felt its power. It has come to men who found 
themselves far from the sea, as a memory of what 
it Avas in their boyhood. It has come to men who 
grew up under the mountain shadow, and now live 
on some desolate plain. It has come to those w r ho 
have been banished into some far-off land, — the 
memory of the sweet meadow, and the darkling 
wood, and the rippling stream, and the solemn sea, 
and the vast expanse of plain. These things have 
all been seen by men who have not been near them 
for many years, and the sight of that invisible nature 
has been to them comfort, and power, and peace. 

Or look at it again in the sight of the invisible 
among men. The child goes out to play, and is 
tempted to do some deed that it knows is wrong ; 
and in that very moment there comes, as plainly as 
if she stood before it, the image of the mother. The 
child sees the sweet, strong, tender face, full of sor- 
row, full of pity, at the sight of the evil that the 
child is about to do. Or it sees the father, strong, 
stern, forbidding, and yet full of love and tenderness. 
And the child says, I cannot do this thing. I have 
seen the father ; I have seen the mother ; and in 
that sight the wickedness that I had in mind has 
been revealed to me. I cannot do this thing:. 

That sight of the invisible never ceases to have an 



108 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



influence upon life. The youth sees it when he comes 
to some great city, and enters into its glare, and feels 
the power of its temptations. Suddenly some day 
there comes before his mind a sight of the sweet, 
pure village girl, to whom he has spoken of his love 
before he started off to win his fortune ; and in the 
glare and shame of the city's life he sees her stand- 
ing, and his heart turns back, and he says, I cannot 
do this thing. The influence of the unseen ! It 
has the power to bring a man out of shame and cor- 
ruption, repentant and humble, back to purity and 
peace. 

The man goes forth to his labor, and engages in 
the great struggle of existence for fortune and place, 
and some day he is hard beset. A temptation comes 
to him to do a little wrong to gain a great right. Tt 
is so easy. It never would be known. No human 
being will ever find that he has done an unworthy 
thing, and if he does it, then there is fortune for him- 
self, and luxury for his wife, and advantages for his 
children. And suddenly he sees them, sees the wife 
and sees the children, remembers what they are, — 
remembers how his wife believes in him, how his chil- 
dren trust him, — and knows that in the day he does 
that evil deed he can never be the same again, never 
can respond to the love of his wife, never can answer 
to the trust of his children, as he has done in the old 
days. And he says, I cannot do this thing. The 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



109 



sight of the invisible has saved him from shame and 
sin, and an abiding remorse. 

We need not multiply illustrations of this truth. 
It must be familiar to us all, — the power of the in- 
visible. The remembrance of nature whose image 
we have seen ; of the mother and father whom we 
have looked upon ; of the wife and children whom 
we have known; — these visions of memory have a 
power that every thoughtful man must recognize. 

And now let us go one step farther. The Bible 
is the history of men who had visions of the invisi- 
ble God. If I have made myself clear in what has 
gone before, you will see at once, my friends, that 
the vision of God, like the vision of nature, must be, 
not the sight of some external thing, but the insight 
of something that is altogether internal. You see 
God as you see the mountains and the waves, not 
outside of yourself, but within yourself. And it is 
because of this that the revelation of God depicted 
in the Scriptures is the revelation of a continual 
process, an endless progress, where men saw God 
more and more as he was in his eternal glory, but 
saw him partially only, inasmuch as they were able 
but partially to receive the reflection of the Divine 
image upon the background of their souls. 

It was not different gods that Abraham, Isaac, 
and Jacob, Moses, and the judges, and the kings and 



110 SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



the prophets saw. It was the same yesterday, to-day, 
and forever. And yet Abraham saw not the God of 
Solomon; he saw the mighty and righteous Judge. 
And Isaac had a vision of one who offers himself in 
sacrifice. And Jacob saw One who was a Wrestler, 
wounding that he might heal. Moses saw him who 
is invisible, and, behold, he was the same that had 
been beheld by the patriarchs, and yet he was dif- 
ferent. It was like the sight which we get of the 
sunset behind a great range of hills. We see the 
sun set, and all the western sky flames with glory. 
And then we go a little farther on our way, and we 
see that night is apparently come. And then we 
march still farther to the north, and, behold, the sun 
is now just setting again in this valley that has 
opened between the mountain peaks. It is not a new 
sun that we have seen ; it is not a new sunset that 
we have seen ; it is the same. And yet the revelation 
of its glory and its beauty is different in every case. 

So was it with these men. The Eternal One that 
Moses saw was greater and nobler and more splendid 
than the Judge of Abraham, or the Sacrifice of Isaac, 
or the Wrestler of Jacob. So we might follow it all 
through the Old Testament history, and see that 
this seeing of the invisible has been, to each age and 
to each individual, a new and more splendid revela- 
tion of the Eternal God. But this sight of the in- 
visible was confined to certain individuals; and at 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



Ill 



last the belief took possession of men that it was 
within the power, not of every man, but only of a 
chosen few, to see the Lord in his glory. It was the 
very mark of the elect that they were permitted to 
behold God face to face. 

And then came Jesus. And he had a vision of the 
invisible that gathered up within itself all the fea- 
tures of the picture that had gone before, and yet 
expanded and ennobled it until, in the sublime sim- 
plicity of his revelation, God was revealed as the 
Father of mankind, the Father of every human soul, 
so that every soul might see Him who is invisible. 
From that day the sight of God has been, not the 
portion of a favored few, but the possibility of all 
men, the reality to untold multitudes. 

And now what should be the effect of such a rev- 
elation as this ? If we look back over the stories of 
the men whose lives are recorded in the Bible, we 
can see very distinctly that the effect in every case 
was something profound. So ought it to be with us. 
But what sight do we need ? What sight of the 
invisible is it necessary that you and I should have in 
order that our lives may be effectually changed ? It 
depends upon how we stand. 

Here is a life that has suddenly become conscious 
of the fact that it is living in awful sin. What is it 
that that life needs to see, my friends ? It needs to 



112 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



see him who is the Saviour. It needs to see him in 
order that the power of God's pardon may rest upon 
the soul, in order that the glory of God's hope may 
illuminate it, in order that the power of the Eternal 
may strengthen it. 0, how dreadful it is when we 
look into the face of any soul that has suddenly 
become conscious of the horror and darkness and 
misery and degradation of its sin, but to whom no 
sight of the invisible has come ! There is the wail- 
ing and gnashing of teeth ; there is the outer dark- 
ness, into which no soul can enter without a fearful 
trembling from the sympathy that is begotten by the 
sight of such great agony. Do you think it is a 
thing that is to come only at the end of the world ? 
Do you think it is an experience which came only in 
the days of old ? As you turn to the biographies 
of men like Bunyan, and hear how the sense of the 
awfulness of sin shook their souls, ay, shook their 
very limbs with terror and apprehension, do you 
think that it is a nervous affection that has passed 
away, or that it is to be experienced perchance here- 
after, in some great excitement of the human race ? 
I tell you no. I tell you that that thing is going on 
in this city to-day ; that there are men and women 
here this morning who know the horror and the 
agony of the discovery of sin. 

Now what can we do for them? Do not let us 
try to soothe them by telling them that sin is not an 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



113 



awful thing; do not let us talk to them as if they 
were nervous and apprehensive, and as if there were 
no reality answering to their apprehension. Let us 
admit that which is true, that this horror has fallen 
upon them because of their wickedness. But let us 
try to reveal to them the everlasting pardon, the eter- 
nal love, and the almighty power that are lying hid- 
den on the background of their souls, reflected by the 
glory of God's spirit shining in the face of Jesus 
Christ, shining into their lives. Tf they would but 
fix their attention upon it, they would see the glory 
of the Lord, they would behold the invisible, and in 
the sight of that invisible they would rise up from 
the midst of their degradation and sin, and hear the 
word of the Lord, saying, " Go, and sin no more ; 
neither do I condemn thee ; go in peace." 

But here is another life, a life very different from 
the one of which we have just spoken, a life that 
knows nothing of the horror and misery and appre- 
hension of the sinner, a life that is strong in its own 
self-complacency, a life that is proud of its own 
power and its own success. And yet when we con- 
sider what is needed to be done in this world, when 
we consider what a perfect life would be, can we fail 
to feel that these men, who are so satisfied with their 
own success, and so proud of their own power, and 
so in love with their own cleverness, have seen very 
little of the glory and nobility of life ? 

8 



114 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



They need a vision of the invisible. They need to 
see that in a perfect life eternal love walks hand in 
hand with almighty power. How little of love there 
is in most of these men that I have in mind ! Self- 
absorbed, self-complacent, self-reliant, self-made, they 
have little pity for those who have not succeeded in 
the struggle for existence. They are proud, but they 
are not tender. All ! if they could have the revela- 
tion of the invisible, if they could see the perfect life 
that was revealed in Jesus, a life of mighty power, 
a life of tender pity, then their lives might be en- 
nobled, and sweetened, and made more gentle, more 
human, more loving, more helpful to human souls. 

Or here is another life, — a life that is dull. It 
has tasted of many fountains, and they taste alike. 
It has tried to be satisfied with the things that the 
world has to offer, and it has found the truth of the 
saying, " There is a peace that the world cannot 
give." It has become a dull, an uninterested, a 
weary, dreary life. Now that life needs a new in- 
terest, and that interest cannot come from the rev- 
elation of anything that is seen, because all that is 
seen has been tried. There is one more hope, and 
that is the revelation of the unseen, the revelation 
of the life of Jesus ; — a life that never failed to be 
interested, a life that went on day by day, finding 
that each step opened up a new vista of the glory 
and splendor of God, a new vista of the want and 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



115 



possibility of human souls. How can any soul be 
dull that knows what there is to be done ! How can 
any soul be uninterested that knows that the almighty 
power of God stands ready to flow down, like some 
great river that has been blocked by the mountains, — 
flow down over the parched plain, and refresh and 
invigorate it ! 

That is the possibility of every soul that knows 
God, to let in the stream of the divine life, and make 
the barren plain a rich and fertile valley. That is 
what will beget a new interest in life, — the interest 
of doing good, the interest of watching the effect 
of God's spirit on other souls, — ay, and on our 
own. The consciousness that we are being led by 
God, and cared for by God, and educated by him, 
will keep life from being dull and uninteresting, will 
fill it with new interest every day, and fill it with 
new power to accomplish the work the desire of 
which that new interest has begotten. 

And, lastly, there are the discouraged ; those who 
have had hope and lost it ; those who have known 
what it was to serve God, and have grown weary of 
it ; those who knew what it was to feel the presence 
of God, and now feel his presence no more. They 
have grown discouraged. They have said, like the 
man of old, " Where is the promise of his coming ? " 
They have said, like the men that walked with Jesus 
without knowing that it was Jesus, " We had hoped 



116 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



that it was he that would have redeemed Israel." 
They have felt the bitterness which wrung from the 
Psalmist his cry, that so many have repeated in the 
hundreds of years that have rolled past since it was 
first heard: "Why art thou so full of heaviness, 
my soul, and why art thou so disquieted within me ? 
Put thy trust in God, for I will yet thank him 
which is the help of my countenance and my God." 
Yet they find it hard to believe. And yet, if they 
could see, — if they could see that which Moses saw, 
the invisible, the King eternal, immortal, glorious, 
who, before the mountains were brought forth, or 
ever the earth or the world was made, was God from 
everlasting to everlasting, world without end, — such 
a vision, my friends, of the eternity of God would 
drive away the clouds of discouragement as the ris- 
ing of the sun dispels the mists. Think what it was 
for this man, who disregarded all the powers of the 
earth, and said that, having seen God in the desert, 
he would go forth into the wilderness again to see 
God. Think what it was that this man did. He 
withstood all the powers of the world that then were, 
in the simple confidence that the Eternal was greater 
than all. Think how his faith was justified. To-day 
the monuments of Egypt are a great curiosity. Its 
splendors have passed away ; its triumphs are things 
that we read of, and hardly believe that they once 
took place. The great, overwhelming civilization 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 117 



built upon the writhing bodies of the wretched slaves 
lias crumbled to the dust, and has become as a dream. 
We look to-day in our museums on the faces of the 
greatest of the kings, and smile to think how true 
it is of ever)- king, that at last he shall sit down in 
the dust. 

But think what it must have been for a man, in the 
day when these things that have passed away were 
living and awful realities, to have stood up in their 
midst and said, " I see him who is invisible." The 
sight of the invisible brought to that man a sense of 
the true proportion of things ; and he that has a 
sense of the true proportion of things can never grow 
morbid, can never become habitually discouraged. 

0, if you could have, my discouraged friend, a 
vision of the Eternal, who never wearies, who never 
sleeps, who keepeth Israel, then all the things of life 
would take their right proportion, and we should feel, 
instead of discouragement, an eagerness to undertake 
the work which has behind it almighty power, and is 
guided by the hand of Eternal Love. 

And now do you ask me how this thing is to be 
brought about, — how we are to see the invisible ? 
Then I say to you, my friends, that there is no force 
at work to-day in nature that was not at work when 
chaos, formless, filled space. But under the influence 
of the Eternal Power these forces have become man- 



118 SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



ifested, until we can see, in the glory of the evening 
sky, in the wonder of the flaming flower, in the 
majesty of the overtopping mountain, in the splen- 
dor of the spreading oak, in the glory of the rolling 
sea, — we can see the manifestation of those powers 
in beauty, so that they become, as I said at the be- 
ginning, an influence upon our lives which was impos- 
sible while they were hidden, wrapped up, secreted, in 
the womb of chaos. They have come out and have 
become manifested in nature, so that they are a 
power upon our souls to-day as we behold the vision 
of them. 

So is it in the revelation of the divine life. There 
is no more of the divine life now in the universe than 
there has been from the beginning. But it has been 
manifested. It has appeared in many a holy life, in 
many a saintly prayer, in many a noble hymn ; until 
at last the perfect image of the Eternal walked this 
earth in the person of Jesus Christ, who said to the 
disciple who said, " Lord, show us the Father and it 
sufhceth us," — " He that hath seen me hath seen 
the Father." That is the image of the invisible, — 
the reflection by the Holy Spirit of God of the Eter- 
nal Reality in the character of Jesus Christ. 

And they who would see that must look upon it. 
And they who look upon it will feel its influence and 
its power. 

But I have said that in all these things, my friends, 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 119 



the vision is of an internal revelation. And so I 
would not have yon for one moment suppose that it is 
necessary for you to go out of your own lives, and by 
the power of your own activity go forth to meet and 
to see Jesus Christ. For, as Paul lias said in the 
Epistle to the Romans, " We need not come up into 
heaven nor go down into hell, for he is in us, in our 
mouth and in our heart." The very lineaments of 
the character of Jesus Christ are traced upon the 
background of your life. And if you would look 
into your life by the doorway of its wants, through 
the window of its aspirations, then you would see the 
answer of Almighty God to those wants and those 
aspirations, and it would be found that they were the 
faint tracings of the outline of the character of Jesus 
Christ, who is the image of the Eternal God. 

Look, then, into your souls, and ask yourselves 
what you need ; and in the very moment that you 
ask yourself what you need you will see what is 
needed, and that sight is a sight of the invisible sat- 
isfaction. Any man that gives himself up to the 
power of the vision of the invisible becomes like the 
invisible, — strong, noble, pure, serene, eternal. Is 
not that the truth that lies back of the dream of 
which we read so much in the Middle Ages, that men 
should have the beatific vision of the Eternal Trinity ? 
Somehow, — no doubt in a crude and materialistic 
form, — these men dreamed of beholding some out- 



120 SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 

ward object that they called the Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Ghost. But because its form was crude, 
we may not therefore conclude that there was no 
reality which answered to this hope. We believe that 
there is. We believe that the day shall come for 
every earnest soul when the perfect vision of that 
which has been seen in part shall be revealed ; when 
the eye of the soul shall behold with perfect satis- 
faction the face of the Father ; when the heart shall 
lean on the heart of the Eternal Son, as John leaned 
on the breast of Jesus at supper ; when the mind of 
man shall perfectly commune with the Spirit of 
Truth, and in that threefold communion, under the 
protection of the Father, in the love of the Son, 
and by the power of the Spirit, find the satisfaction 
after which the soul had thirsted from the day it 
first began to consider the meaning of the mystery 
of life. 

Strive, in your day of temptation, and trial, and 
burden, and sorrow, to see him who is invisible. 
Strive to see the image of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ. Look till you find the image of your Father 
imprinted on the background of your soul ; for in 
the day you see the Eternal, you yourself will feel the 
power of the eternal life. And the end to which we 
travel is the answer of the cry of the religious soul, 
" My soul is athirst for God, yea, even for the living 



SEEING THE INVISIBLE. 



121 



God. When shall T come to appear before the pres- 
ence of God ? " 

In the day when yon and I are ready to receive the 
perfect revelation of the Eternal, the cry for satis- 
faction and for vision will be answered by Almighty 
God. 



IX. 



GAMBLING. 



There is a way that seemeth right unto a man y but the 
end thereof are the ways of death. — Proverbs, xvi. 25. 

HPHE prevailing philosophy of the day is utilita- 



\ rian. It teaches that the only way to learn 
whether an act is good or bad is to apply the test 
of experience. If, in the long run, it is found that 
a certain act results in the greatest good of the great- 
est number, then that act may be ticketed good. If, 
on the contrary, it is found that happiness is not the 
result of a certain act, then it may be stated that 
that act is wrongful. It is not my purpose to dis- 
cuss the principles of this school, nor ask if that is 
the only test we have of right and wrong. I wish 
rather to call your attention to the truth in it, which 
is, that in the long run right produces happiness 
and evil misery ; and then to ask you to remember 
that there are many cases in which it is not easy 
to decide by abstract reasoning whether a certain 
act is right or wrong, and that in those cases we 




GAMBLING. 



123 



may apply with advantage the utilitarian principle of 
ethics. 

It is sometimes supposed that this is a modern dis- 
covery ; but it is not so. This is the principle under- 
lying the Book of Proverbs. In the sixteenth chapter 
at the twenty-fifth verse this is stated with great 
clearness, " There is a way that seemeth right unto a 
man, but the end thereof are the ways of death." 

As soon as we begin seriously to consider the 
meaning of such words as these, we are met with a 
difficulty. " The way seems to a man right." What 
more then can a man do than follow that way ? Nay, 
must we not go farther, and say that each man ought 
to do what seems to him to be right without regard 
to consequences ? Is it not the exercise of the great 
principle of private judgment, which no man has a 
right to abandon ? It is this form of private judg- 
ment which the Romish controversialist delights to 
fasten upon. It is this confusion which leads men 
and women to say, However disadvantageous divorce 
may be to the community, in my case it seems to be 
right, and therefore I must follow that way. Now 
the answer to this sophistry is not difficult to find. 
The true principle of private judgment is not "A 
man is bound to follow the way that seems to him 
to be right." Such a rule would destroy society, and 
make progress impossible. The rule is, £t No man 
should do that which he knows to be wrong." In 



124 



GAMBLING. 



questions of morals the first essential is prudence, 
as the Proverbs so often say. It is far better that 
a man should stand still, make no progress, than 
that he should retrograde. Therefore, that a way 
seems to me right is no warrant for me to walk in 
it. On the contrary, I am bound to ask myself what 
the experience of mankind has shown in regard to 
this way. If a hundred travellers meet a man on 
the highway and tell him that the right hand turn- 
ing brings him to a bridge which it is not safe to 
cross, and he persists, because the bridge seems to 
him strong, and is drowned, we say he was a fool. 
And that is the word which the Book of Proverbs is 
very fond of using of those who are " wise in their 
own eyes, and prudent in their own conceit." 

But I think, moreover, that in many of these so 
called doubtful cases of conscience it will be found 
that selfishness has played a part. The way seems 
to a man to be right because he wants it so to seem. 
Still there are doubtful cases. There are certain 
acts which, treating of them in the abstract, we can 
find many reasons to approve, but of which the end 
is the way of death. 

A notable example of this is found in the vice of 
gambling. It is a perfect example. In the first 
place, there cannot be any reason assigned for its 
being wrong to which a more or less good answer 



GAMBLING. 



125 



cannot be found. To many good people it seems to 
be right. On the other hand, there is no one who 
denies that the end thereof are the ways of death. 
That it is a vice which is increasing, no thought- 
ful observer of contemporary morals, I think, will 
deny. 

What is gambling? It is defined as playing for 
money or other stake. The extent of it, however, 
cannot be limited to what is commonly understood 
by play, for it is rife in business. The difference 
between work and play seems to be that play is an 
end in itself, while work is that which produces a 
value. Any business so called which does not have 
production of value as its object is playing for a 
stake. That is, it hopes to gain without giving an 
equivalent. 

Just what such business is, it is not easy for one 
not engaged in business to say. I think that moral- 
ists have done harm in including under the head of 
gambling forms of business which may be demoral- 
izing, but which are not gambling. 

Thus it is frequently said that dealing in " futures " 
is gambling. But I think not. If a man order ten 
tons of coal in June, to be delivered on the first of 
August, at the current price at that date, he is deaL 
ing in futures, but he is not gambling, because it is a 
transaction of mutual advantage. The buyer takes 
a risk in the hopes of getting his coal cheap, and the 



126 



GAMBLING. 



dealer takes a risk in order that his teams may be 
employed at the dull season. The essence of gam- 
bling is not the risk, for that is an element in all 
business. It is the failure to render an equivalent 
for value received, and the hope that no such equiva- 
lent will be necessary. 

In the same way, speculation is sometimes loosely 
called gambling. But that is not true of all specula- 
tion. A man buys stock at seventy. It falls to 
thirty. If he sells, he is not a gambler. Nor is he 
if the figures be reversed. There was a transaction 
of mutual advantage. One preferred ready money to 
further risk, and the other preferred to use unem- 
ployed money in the hope of a large increase. And 
yet, while, as I say, neither of these transactions 
can be called gambling, there can be no question that 
they have tended to cultivate the gambling spirit. 
It shows itself in the messenger boy who bets on the 
rise and fall of the market, in the bucket shop, and 
in the financier who bids for stock for which he can- 
not pay, in the hope that an upward movement will 
enable him to sell it without having paid for it. 
That this spirit is increasing in business, no one can 
doubt. It leads to fraud, and tempts men who think 
themselves honorable to circulate false reports about 
stock, that it may fall, or to use equally dishonorable 
means to raise values. In a purer moral atmos- 
phere, we will not call the men who do such things 



GAMBLING. 



127 



" bulls " and " bears " ; they will be more aptly called 
" pigs " and "snakes." 

Now the end of these things are the ways of death. 
All goes well until a man can stand the pressure no 
longer ; and then, in order to divert his mind, he 
abandons his wife for the strange woman, whose ways 
go down to the grave ; or he takes to drink, to steady 
his nerves ; or throws trust money on the table, in 
the hope that at last he may win ; or, when all is 
lost, and shame is about to fall on those who bear 
his name, blows out his brains, — dies as the fool 
dieth, though he be called a wise man by kindred 
spirits. 

But the gambling in business is not the only mani- 
festation of the spirit. If it were, I should not feel 
called upon to speak of it in a mixed congregation. 
In some cases, the contact with evil men in the busi- 
ness community may corrupt a youth, but I venture 
to think that in the large majority of cases they are 
corrupt before they begin their business career. It 
has been said that the cost of athletics in one of the 
colleges in this country is over twenty-five thousand 
dollars a year. But that takes no account of the 
sums of money which pass from hand to hand at 
every football match or base-ball game. If a man 
goes to a horse race, he expects to see professional 
gamblers flaunting their handful of bills, and crying 



128 



GAMBLING. 



for bets ; but it is a thing to consider, when the men 
who are called to be the true aristocracy of this 
land are found aping the look and manner of the 
blackleg, and turning that which is sanctioned by the 
authorities because it may be a healthful pastime into 
a degrading sport, — no longer an end in itself, no 
longer played for the glory of the college, but de- 
lighted in because it gives an opportunity for a vicious 
excitement. Nor is that all. The way of it is the 
way of death. It is tending more and more to be- 
come a game played not by undergraduates. Men, it 
is believed, enroll themselves on college books simply 
to play. The newspapers are full of charges and 
countercharges of things unworthy of gentlemen. 
Now when these things are considered dispassionately, 
men are ashamed of them. They take place because 
men's passions have become inflamed as a result of 
the stakes which are on a game. No wonder, after 
several years of such excitement, the monotony of 
legitimate business seems unbearable, and gambling 
is resorted to as a stimulant. 

With this many people will agree, and say, " Yes, 
the dangers of college life are so great that I will not 
send my boy there, for fear he be corrupted." But 
what will you do with him ? Will you send him to 
school ? If so, you will soon find that gambling is 
as constantly practised among schoolboys as amongst 
collegians. I think we should stand appalled if we 



GAMBLING. 



129 



knew the extent to which the boys of this commu- 
nity indulge in betting. Many a boy who cannot 
pass his preliminaries can hold his own in gambling, 
because he has had long practice at school. That it 
leads to debt, to falsehood on the part of boys who 
must obtain money from their parents, — yes, even 
to drink and drunkenness, — is a fact known to some 
of you, if not to all. It is not the college which cor- 
rupts the boy : it is the boy who corrupts the college. 
When these things come to light, the parents say, 
"What shall we do?" Perhaps they try a private 
school, where only " good boys" are admitted. But 
it does not follow that a boy is bad because he bets. 
Boys are imitative ; they do what they see others do. 
They want to be manly ; they want to do the same 
things their uncles and fathers do. And if the best 
boy in the community is sent to the most exclusive 
school in the city, it will be found that he has fallen 
into this evil way if those whom he looks up to 
walk in it. 

So, then, we must turn from the appalling spectacle 
of gambling in business, the disgusting degradation 
of sport in college, the corrupting practice of betting 
in schools, and look in upon the family, and ask what 
has the home influence done to guard against this 
growing evil. My friends, I think you will say at 
once, too little. Perhaps some of you will go farther, 
and say the children have been made familiar with 

9 



130 



GAMBLING. 



gambling while in the nursery. If a little boy ad- 
mires a charm that his father wears and learns that 
he won it from a friend on a bet, if a little girl asks 
with delight where the new ornament came from and 
learns that her mother won it at cards, the bloom 
has been taken off their sense of honor ; and we need 
not utter our philippics against State Street, nor 
indulge in tirades against the college, nor despair 
of the school, for we have tracked the evil home, 
and found that it is an honored guest where we 
should look to find only that which is lovely and 
honest, and of good report. 

And now some of you will think it is time that 
there should be a rejoinder ; and that I will try and 
put as fairly as possible. 

In the first place, it will be said, gambling is 
the harmful excess of a thing in itself harmless. It 
is like drunkenness, — a vice which all good people 
condemn, and which fanatics would prevent by the 
prohibition of even a single glass of wine. In dis- 
cussing an evil it is necessary to distinguish between 
the use and abuse of a practice. The loss or gain 
of large sums of money on a horse race is a bad 
thing ; the winning of ten-cent points at whist has 
no evil in it. Now, it is right to admit that this 
position has the approval of many distinguished mor- 
alists, and is not to be lightly set aside. If it be true, 



GAMBLING. 



131 



then the denunciation of petty playing for stakes is 
as likely to produce a reaction as the denunciation of 
the temperate use of alcohol. But suppose for a mo- 
ment that it be true, — suppose it seemeth to a man 
to be right, — is it not admitted that the end thereof 
are the ways of death ? And if so, are we not called 
upon to deny ourselves an indulgence which, though 
harmless in itself, is productive of great evil ? It 
may be answered, No. I am not called upon to 
eschew the use of wine in the privacy of my own 
home because a man is making a beast of himself 
around the corner ; no more am I called upon to give 
up my whist party, where we play for small stakes, 
because some man at the club is wasting his sub- 
stance at poker. 

But the answer, I think, lies here. You may use 
your wine not simply because it pleases your pal- 
ate, — that would be the extreme of selfishness; you 
may use it because it is good for you in small 
quantities ; but did any one ever hold that playing 
for small stakes was a good ? No, the most that 
was ever said by its advocates is that it is harm- 
less in small quantities. Aud, again, you may use 
your wine believing that you are setting a good 
example, — believing that intemperance can best be 
met, not by prohibition, but by the temperate use of 
light beverages. But did any one ever believe that 
playing for small stakes prevented a man or boy 



132 



GAMBLING. 



from playing for larger ones ? No, my friends ; the 
analogy will not bear examination. Admit, if you 
will, that playing for small stakes is not wrong, the 
question for you to ask is this : Considering the spirit 
of gambling in business, considering the degradation 
of sport in college, considering the demoralization 
of boys in school, am I not called upon to deny 
myself that which I do not consider wrong for fear 
of having an evil influence in the community ? 

That is my reply to the first objection. The sec- 
ond objection is this. Gambling is defined as the 
receipt of money without the exchange of an equiva- 
lent. But what is meant by an equivalent ? Cer- 
tainly not an equivalent sum of money or tangible 
goods. When I go to the theatre I pay a certain 
sum of money to see a play ; the equivalent is the 
pleasure I receive. Very well, if I play a game 
with my friend for a certain sum of money and I 
lose, the equivalent is found in the excitement which 
I had in trying not to lose. The answer is, that in 
the first case you paid for a commodity which was 
the result of work on the part of the actor, and was 
therefore a legitimate business transaction ; whereas 
in the second case you took from your friend some- 
thing which he did not mind losing, perhaps, but 
still you took it from him because you outwitted him. 
We have become so familiar with this method of out- 
witting one another that we have become callous to 



GAMBLING. 



133 



the essential of it. But suppose we tried a new 
method of arriving at the same result, I think we 
should see what I wish to point out. Suppose instead 
of playing whist, two gentlemen were to stand up in 
a drawing-room and agree to try to rob one another 
for ten minutes, each to keep what he seized ; or 
suppose we met a friend coming out of the club, and 
asked him where he got his scarf-pin, and he replied, 
' ; I won it from a man in a pickpocket match." We 
should have no difficulty then in seeing that the ob- 
taining of another man's goods, whether in large or 
small quantities, as the result of outwitting him, is a 
degrading practice, which must tend to blunt the 
sense of honor and destroy self-respect. And while 
that is more apparent in the case where large sums 
are at stake, yet the principle is the same in the 
smallest sum. And it is that consideration which 
leads me to feel that not only is gambling an evil 
because of its effects, but that it is an evil in itself, 
because it makes it possible for a man to receive 
from a friend that which the friend must give him 
because he has been outwitted. To the loser it is a 
humiliation, and to the gainer it is a degradation. 

And so, my friends, whether you agree with me or 
not in regard to the attempt which I have made to 
point out the essential evil of gambling, yet I beg 
you to consider the end. It is the way of death, — 



134 



GAMBLING. 



death of peace in the home, truth in school, decency 
in college, and honor in business. Ought it not, 
then, to be banished from the family ? 

We are in the season of Lent, — the season in 
which our Church calls on us to consider the sacri- 
fice of the Son of God, calls on us to ask ourselves 
what is to be the end of our life. I have tried to 
point out to you the end of one practice which is 
growing frequent ; but I would not leave it until you 
turn from all questions of expediency and ask your- 
selves, How does it appear when we consider Jesus 
Christ the end of our conversation, — the end to 
which a righteous character tends ? There can be but 
one answer. He found time, even in the awful stress 
of the great pressure of his short life, to turn aside 
and refresh himself by entering into the simple joys 
of the Galilean village ; he did not disdain the great 
feast which an admirer prepared for him. His gen- 
tle irony showed how the sweet laughter might have 
been heard from those divine lips had the world to 
whom he came received him. So that his life gives 
no countenance to ascetic gloom. But if we ask our- 
selves whether he with his perfect faith in God his 
Father would have entered into any pastime which, 
by its prostitution of the noble spirit of adventure, 
would have produced the feverish anxiety which de- 
stroys faith in God, — whether he who was the em- 
bodiment of sublime self-respect would have amused 



GAMBLING. 



135 



himself by tarnishing it, — whether he who loved the 
souls of men so as to lay down his life for them 
would have given occasion to a little child to stumble, 
we have no difficulty in finding the answer. If, then, 
he whose passions were held in perfect control, whose 
love burned strong, and whose self-respect knew no 
moments of remorse, — if he could not have done 
such things without loss, what must be the result for 
you and me ? We call ourselves his followers, but 
we have moments when we seem contemptible to 
ourselves, unworthy of God's salvation. Our pas- 
sions are ready to spring upon us when we least 
expect it, and overpower us ; our love of our fellow 
men is often discolored by hatred. We then can- 
not afford to do anything that will lessen self-respect, 
or inflame passion, or weaken brotherly love. "There 
is a way that seemeth unto a man right, but the end 
thereof are the ways of death." 



X. 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt make 
a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not blood upon 
thy house, if any man fall from thence. — Deuteronomy, 
xxii. 8. 



HE spirit which breathes through the Book of 



Deuteronomy is very different from that which 
animates our modern civilization. The latter says, 
Let each man look out for himself. There are, in- 
deed, laws for the safeguard of the public, but they 
proceed upon the supposition that each man is bound 
to guard against accident ; and the liability of the 
employer is carefully limited to accidents which are 
met with in the line of the duty for which an indi- 
vidual has been engaged, so that if an employee, in 
order to oblige another, steps aside from his post, 
and is caught in the revolving wheel and crushed, 
the company is not accountable. It is not my pur- 
pose to discuss this matter. I merely wish to call 
your attention to it, that, in the contrast with the 
spirit of the Hebrew law, the difference may be 
clearly seen. For in that it was enacted, that if a 




THE NEWSPAPER. 



137 



man came to visit a neighbor, and, being led to what 
answered to the drawing-room of a modern house, — 
the flat roof, screened with plants, and strewn with 
rugs, — fell from thence and was killed, the host was 
guilty of his blood, because he had not built high 
enough the battlement of his house. It was not 
enough that a man should guard himself against acci- 
dent, it was not enough that a man should tell his 
children not to go too near the edge, nor even to 
warn his friend. If his battlement was not high 
enough to prevent such an accident, he was guilty 
of his neighbor's blood. 

It was believed by the Jew that this law was the 
expression of the will of Jehovah. As we read it, 
we feel that it is the expression of a truth too often 
forgotten in legislation. A paternal government 
would take all responsibility from the individual by 
protecting each man as a child ; the anarchist would 
leave such license to the individual that no man 
should have cause to consider his neighbor. The 
Hebrew did neither the one nor the other. His law 
said, If your brother come to harm through your 
carelessness, you are a guilty man. It appealed to the 
conscience of the individual so to construct his house 
that no man might be the worse for his having lived. 

Our subject, then, is man's responsibility for his 
neighbor. The subject is an immense one, for it 



138 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



touches every point of contact between man and man. 
It would be well, then, if the housekeeper were to ask 
what is the result of her example upon the servants 
who live in her house ; for the host to ask what is his 
point of contact with his brother man, and whether the 
duties thereof are fulfilled. Does the merchant mis- 
represent his goods ? Or does he allow a misrepresen- 
tation to go uncorrected ? Does the shopkeeper sell as 
pure what will poison little children, and put a part 
of the profit in the collection to convert the heathen? 
Does the lawyer seek to make peace, or does he keep 
silent, lest a compromise should reduce the fee ? 
Does the doctor ask for a consultation when he is in 
doubt ? or does he administer drugs, hoping that 
nature will save his reputation ? Is there any man 
here whose business is harmful to his brother man ? 
Do you say that such questions are an insult to you ? 
They are not so meant. If such things are, it is in 
the large majority of cases because men have grown 
up under the false notion that each man must look 
out for himself, and that we have no responsibility 
for the health, the comfort, the property, or the 
morals of our neighbors. Indeed we have. And if 
each one of us were to look into his life, I doubt not 
we should find that we had not obeyed the injunc- 
tion of the old law to build a battlement for the 
roof, and that we are guilty of some injury to our 
brother. 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



139 



If each of us were to do that, what sermons would 
be preached this day ! Each man at once preacher 
and hearer ! But if you will not preach to yourselves 
you must be without a sermon. I cannot take up 
these matters in detail and deal with them. I can- 
not speak of the lawyer's sins while the merchant 
thanks God that he is not as that man. I would 
rather speak of some special manifestation of the evil 
which is not personal, or rather is so personal that 
it applies to every one of us. What shall it be ? 
What one great enterprise of modern life touches you 
and me ? You anticipate me in the answer. It is 
the Newspaper. 

There is no agency that can for a moment be 
compared with it. It is as permeating as the atmos- 
phere. Its influence is stronger than the law. It 
has the power of the Popes in the Middle Ages. It 
binds men's sins upon them, and they are bound. 
It looses the notorious renegade, and he is received 
again into society. It is a necessity ; men chafe if 
it be ten minutes late in the morning ; they must 
have it on Sunday. Great numbers of people take 
one in the morning and another in the evening. It 
is hardly an exaggeration to say that it is the only 
form of literature that multitudes in this land ever 
read. As the taste and character of our fathers was 
built upon the Bible, so is the taste and character 



140 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



of the great mass of the sixty millions of the people 
of this republic fashioned by the daily paper. Our 
first feeling ought to be one of gratitude. That there 
can be any means of reaching our fellow men and 
speaking to them every day ; cheering them with 
good news ; telling them, with awful solemnity, of 
the sins and sorrows of our brethren ; pointing with 
strong faith to the future, so full of unexpected pos- 
sibilities, in which every man shall have an opportu- 
nity to develop his personality, — why, it is almost too 
good to be true ! What would not Paul have done, 
had it been possible in his day to speak to great 
multitudes of the meaning of the Divine life ? What 
would not John have done, who laid down his tired 
pen after he had written his little Book, saying, 
" Many other things Jesus did which are not written, 
for even the world itself could not contain the things 
which could be written " ! 

It cannot fail, then, to be a subject of momentous 
importance to every one of us. A thing which is a 
necessity, which speaks to great multitudes every 
day, which is never weary, but can multiply its copies 
a million times, must surely be the greatest influence 
for good or evil in our day. 

I have said that it has taken the place of the Bible 
in the family life. It is therefore not unfair to com- 
pare it with the Bible. The Bible, we have come to 
learn, is not one book, but the literature of the 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



141 



Hebrew people bound together for convenience. It 
is a picture of Hebrew life for more than a thousand 
years. Now, that is exactly what the newspaper de- 
clares itself to be, — a picture of life. It says : " If 
you do not like the picture, change the original. We 
have nothing to do with that. "What we undertake to 
do is to hold up a mirror to the world once a day, that 
every man may see what life is. We do it as a busi- 
ness enterprise, and are no more responsible for the 
face that you see than the photographer for the figure 
on the negative." 

The first question, then, which we have to ask, is 
this : Is the daily paper a portrait of life ? Is it a 
composite photograph, so to speak, that you have 
seen this morning of the American life of the last 
week? I answer with indignation, It is not. It is 
a photograph fit for the rogues' gallery. It is a 
picture made up from the faces of one saint and 
many murderers, adulterers, false swearers, whore- 
mongers, thieves, and reprobates. It is an outrage 
to say that this is a picture of life. It is no more a 
picture of life than the Charles Street jail is a picture 
of Boston society, — no more a picture of modern civ- 
ilization than the garbage and dead wood floating in 
the harbor is a picture of the glorious port that threw 
open its gates with this morning's sun to greet the 
native and welcome the immigrant. 

It is a part of life, — a dreadful part. Perhaps it 



142 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



should be told, as some of the awful stories of shame 
and lust are told in the Bible. But how shall it be 
told ? We read that there came to Jesus men who 
called themselves religious, leading a sinful woman, 
and began to give him the details of the poor crea- 
ture's sin ; but Jesus stooped down, and wrote on 
the ground as though he heard them not. They 
might with unblushing cheek point to a sister's 
shame ; but he bowed himself down, feeling the 
shame that neither the brazen men nor the fright- 
ened woman felt. Is that the way the newspaper 
tells of shame ? It is not. It is blazoned on the 
page. A story that, if it were told in its naked truth, 
would be too sickening for any but a hardened sin- 
ner to read, is dressed in a certain tawdry finery and 
made of interest, so that the young read it and suck 
in the poison which some day will break out in scab 
and blotch, like the leprosy of old. 

Yet the boast of the newspapers has been that 
they painted life as it is. If they have not done this, 
then they have slandered their countrymen. And 
that is what I deliberately charge a large part of the 
press of this country with doing. They gather up 
the exciting and sensational events, and color them 
still more intensely, and declare that they are giving 
us and our children a picture of American life, after 
eighteen hundred years of the influence of J esus. It 
is an outrage. And what must be the result ? Why, 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



143 



it is inevitable that those who accept this picture as 
true must come to feel that vice is the rule and vir- 
tue the exception. Yet if that were so, society could 
not hold together. If this country is truly repre- 
sented by the daily paper, it is a nest of iniquity into 
which one or two saints have wandered by mistake 
and got lost. What appeal, then, can you make to 
your boy to be industrious and honest, God-fearing 
and reverent, if these virtues are the rare exception ? 
There is nothing a boy so dreads as being thought 
odd. The boys who were brought up on the Bible 
learned that vice was the awful violation of the social 
order. The boy who is brought up on the newspaper 
will learn that vice is the rule, and so have his moral 
judgment utterly perverted. Every speech he listens 
to in which the greatness of his country is spoken 
of will deepen his deadly heresy that sin is no dis- 
grace to a people, and that smartness, not righteous- 
ness, exalteth a nation. 

That this is a true statement of the case many of 
you believe. There may be some, however, who will 
say : You are falling into the error you have con- 
demned. You are drawing a dark picture, and im- 
plying that all newspapers are guilty, whereas it is 
only true of some. That I am willing to grant. 
But I say, let any man go to a new city, and buy the 
first newspaper offered him, and see whether or not 
the news columns are not largely given up to records 



144 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



of crime or filthy scandal. Take a composite photo- 
graph of the great daily newspapers of this country, 
and see if you do not get a face at once disgusting 
and saddening. 

Again, it may be said, Even to such papers you 
do not give the credit they deserve. They are a 
powerful aid to the police ; from their Argus-eyed 
staff no criminal can escape. Supposing it were 
true, it is no excuse ; in a well regulated munici- 
pality the sewers and cesspools are cleaned at 
night. 

Once more, You forget that by showing the in- 
evitable result of crime they have a moral influence 
in the community. 

There never was a greater fallacy. The State of 
New York has been compelled to pass a law forbid- 
ding the description by the newspapers of the execu- 
tion of criminals. It has been found too demoralizing. 
That that law can be enforced no one believes, be- 
cause the lawmakers will break it in order to satisfy 
their curiosity. It used to be said that the public 
execution of a criminal deterred others from a like 
offence. No one believes that now. The silent and 
swift cleaving of the sword of justice is the only thing 
that will strike terror into the mind of the evil-doer. 
The kind-hearted people who distribute the news- 
papers in the jails are actuated by most worthy 
motives, but in my judgment they do a vast deal 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



145 



of harm. I have had too many inmates of a cell 
show me with ill concealed pride the account of their 
trial, the appearance which they presented, and the 
sympathy of the spectators, not to have learned that 
what the criminal wants is not to know the news, but 
only to see his name in print and to feel that he has 
at last accomplished the object of his life, which was 
to raise himself out of the obscurity in which he had 
lived. To find himself one of a class to whom the 
whole community is giving attention is the ambition 
of many a youth who is not naturally vicious nor 
depraved. That is my judgment ; and I believe it 
will be approved by most of those who have had 
dealings with the criminal classes. Therefore the 
newspaper offsets any benefit it may be to the com- 
munity by the reward it presents to the criminal. 

I do not speak of the way in which homes are in- 
vaded, of the paid guest whom the society papers 
send to lunches and receptions, to the gossip bought 
from servants or the web of scandal spun from a 
hasty word, for that would lead us to the consider- 
ation of the so called society journal, and there are 
depths into which a decent congregation ought not 
to be asked to descend. There is a certain brutal 
frankness in the way in which the morning paper 
deals with the shame of life. But the society paper 
slinks in after dark and covers its shame with dia- 
monds and plush, and tells silly people that the 

10 



146 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



society which they long to enter is after all a very 
wicked thing, though, it must be admitted, very de- 
lightful. The Turk respects the modest woman who 
goes veiled through the streets, but in this enlight- 
ened land ruffians are allowed to enter the drawing- 
room and tear the veil from the face of the bride, or 
show to a gaping world the calm face of the dead. 

Now who is responsible for this state of affairs ? 
The proprietors, stockholders, editors, and reporters 
say they are not. They declare that they take no 
pleasure in such things, — that it is what the public 
demands, — and that they are no more responsible 
for the taste of the public than a hotel keeper, who 
takes a mutton chop and a boiled potato for his din- 
ner, is responsible for the disgusting waste of food 
which is spread on the table every evening for his 
guests. The public demands it, and he who caters 
for the public must not serve to suit himself, but 
the public. 

It might as well be said at once, that there is no 
argument which would influence a man who seriously 
believed in this illustration. Yet one cannot but 
foresee how flaming would be the denouncement of 
the hotel which should take the fatal step from bad 
taste to slow poison. Let the Hotel Vend6me find a 
receipt of arsenic or strychnine which will make the 
food more palatable even than it is now; let it in- 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



147 



crease its patronage by such means ; let some doctor 
show that strong men and fair women and little chil- 
dren are being slowly poisoned, — not so fatally that 
they cannot eat, but only so that they can no longer 
be of the value to the community that they once were, 
— and I think the able editor might be left to point 
out the immorality of giving to people that which is 
destructive, simply because they ask for it. I think 
we should hear something about duty to the public, 
and the shameful love of money, and many other 
beautiful moral sentiments, perhaps joined with a 
suggestion that the Back Bay is, after all, no better 
than the South Cove. Such an argument cannot be 
treated seriously. If it were carried to its logical 
conclusion, there is no den of iniquity winked at by 
the law which it might not defend, — no outrage in 
history, from the Black Hole of Calcutta to Libby 
Prison, that it might not justify. The argument is 
as old as iniquity itself. " When Pilate saw that he 
could prevail nothing, but rather that a tumult was 
made, he took water and washed his hands, saying, 
I am innocent of the blood of this just person ; see ye 
to it.' 5 And the voices of the multitude prevailed. 
Did Pilate cleanse his conscience when he washed 
his hands ? 

There is one count in this indictment against the 
newspaper which may not be developed, and yet it 
may not be ignored, Not only are shameful things 



148 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



treated as if they were the rule, killing self-respect in 
the nation ; not only is the sacredness of private life 
violated, to the destruction of national modesty ; not 
only is crime rewarded by giving it the desired pub- 
licity ; not only is slander spread broadcast over the 
land, killing peace ; not only is there deliberate mis- 
representation of political opponents, — but to all 
this is added the worst of all, the daily press is made 
the medium of communication between vice and its 
victims. Not only is it a signpost of iniquity to the 
lovers of evil, but it is a snare to the innocent, who 
come up to this great city year after year to be 
snared, and caught, and taken. 

What answer is made to this charge? It is, That 
evil does exist ; and that the newspaper is not bound 
to look after children who do not know what life 
means; nor is it bound to inquire into the char- 
acter of its advertisements. To that I answer, in 
the words of Christ, " It must needs be that offences 
come." Life being what it is, it cannot fail that 
many will be made to stumble, " but woe to that man 
by whom the offence cometh." 

And now, my friends, who is that man ? For to 
talk about evil in the abstract, and not to show 
where the evil is caused, is worse than useless. I 
say, Who is the man by whom this offence cometh ? 
Is it the owner, editor, reporter, printer? I have 
said that I thought their sin was great ; I have com- 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



149 



pared their excuse to that of Pilate ; and yet we 
must not forget that Jesus, in his perfect justice, 
admitted that there was something in Pilate's plea, 
Ee that delivered me unto thee hath the greater 
sin." Pilate did what the multitude desired. It was 
the multitude, led by the religious Pharisee and the 
cultivated Sadducee, that had the greater sin. And 
so is it to-day. If religious men and educated men 
read those newspapers whose evil influence they rec- 
ognize, they are responsible for them. Go into any 
office to-morrow morning, and turn over the news- 
papers, and see who make these papers possible. 
Ask the man who sits at the desk what he thinks of 
it all, and he will say. Well, they are pretty bad ; 
but they cater to the criminal class, and to their 
friends. 

Why, my friends, there are not enough criminals 
and their friends in this Commonwealth to support 
a newspaper a week. The sales are large, because 
people who are counted respectable like to read 
them, because men who will not let them come into 
their homes for fear of corrupting their children and 
servants will read them in the office, and then hand 
them to the office boy, — that is, to some one's else 
child. 

Is that all ? No : a newspaper is not supported by 
its readers; it is supported by its advertisements. 
Every man who puts an advertisement into a disrep- 



150 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



utable paper is helping it, and every firm which keeps 
one standing there is supporting it. Why is it done ? 
Because, say men, we are dependent upon the people 
for customers ; we must advertise where we shall be 
seen. How does that differ from the excuse of the 
paper itself, which said, I must be what the people 
want. If I pay money to a grog-shop to let me 
hang a sign over the bar, I am in part responsible 
for the evil of that shop. Well, if the saloon has 
destroyed its thousands, the press has destroyed its 
ten thousands. And for this evil we Christian people 
are responsible. Let the sales of any paper fall off 
two hundred copies to-morrow, and the owners will 
consider. Let fifty reputable firms withdraw their 
advertisements, and the tone of the paper will change. 

" When thou buildest a new house, then thou shalt 
build a battlement for thy roof, that thou bring not 
blood upon thy house, if any man fall from thence." 
Our fathers laid the strong foundations of a new 
house, of a better civilization, and of a purer social 
order on the site of this city. Of that new house of 
civilization the newspaper is the roof. It is our glory. 
For energy, for generosity, for splendid organization, 
it is the crown of our business life. From it, as from 
a high roof, we ought to have a sight of the glory of 
the land : it should be the meeting place of wise and 
noble minds. It should stand in a purer atmosphere 



THE NEWSPAPER. 



151 



than that of the streets below. From it we should 
see the squalor and the sin and the wrong-doing, but 
we should see too that the school-house on the hill 
is mightier than the ignorance of the degraded, that 
the bank is built on the sure foundation of public 
honor, that the drawn curtains shade a picture of a 
home of purity and peace and joy, and that, above 
all, the church's spire points to the heavenly city, 
where nothing that is unclean can enter. 

My friends and fellow Christians, it is a thing for 
you to consider. Before it be too late, let us build a 
battlement for our roof, lest our children and the 
stranger fall therefrom, and upon us be their blood. 



XI. 



THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 

God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto 
me, and I unto the ivorld. — Galatians, vi. 14. 

TF any one had told St. Paul fourteen years before 
these words were written that he would ever thus 
express his thought of the glory of life, he would have 
repudiated the suggestion with scorn. The cross of 
Christ had changed that man so that he had before 
him an altogether new and different ideal of life. 
Let us look at it awhile this morning, and ask our- 
selves what Paul meant when he said that the world 
was crucified to him and he was crucified to the 
world, and that in the cross, the instrument of that 
suffering, he gloried. 

The crucifixion of the world to Paul by the cross 
of Christ was the crucifixion of the world to him by 
the power of Christ, to whom also the world had been 
crucified. What does that mean? The world, that 
which stood around the life of Christ, was crucified 



THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



153 



to him, that is to say, was killed by a life that caused 
great suffering and great agony, until at last those 
things that surrounded his life were dead to him, and 
had no longer any power over him. Does it seem 
strange to you that it should have been necessary for 
Christ to have passed through this experience of the 
crucifixion of the world unto himself ? It will not 
if you remember that he was the Perfect Man, if you 
remember that every experience of humanity had to 
pass through Jesus's life, and that sin did not pass 
through it because sin is no necessary experience of 
humanity. Then you will see how necessary it was 
even for Christ that the world should be crucified 
to him. 

Let us look at it for a moment, and see what it was 
that was taking place in the life of our Master. We 
must not think of the crucifixion as a thing that 
took place in the short space between the sixth and 
ninth hours of Good Friday. The crucifixion of 
Christ was consummated on Good Friday, but it had 
been going on through his whole life ; first the cruci- 
fixion of the world unto him, and then the crucifixion 
of himself unto the world. When he went up to 
Jerusalem full of the thought of redeeming his own 
people Israel, and they would not listen to his words, 
there was the beginning of the crucifixion of the 
world unto Christ. The hope of reforming the peo- 
ple whom he loved, the Jewish nation whom he 



154 



THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



desired to save, was killed before his eyes ; and lie 
was obliged to give up his ministry in Jerusalem and 
begin in Galilee. And the same thing was repeated 
there ; the fickleness of the people soon showed the 
Master that the hope he had had in Galilee was 
killed. The weakness and fickleness of the disciples 
whom Jesus had chosen and trained, and whom he 
loved with an exceeding great love, was another 
crucifixion of the world to the Master, until at last 
his eyes were set towards the consummation of it 
all, and he knew that his ministry had failed, as 
men count failure, and that all that he had hoped 
to do when he began to preach the Gospel of the 
kingdom had been frustrated. Little by little the 
world had been crucified to him ; little by little 
the hopes, the desires, the longings of his heart, 
had fallen dead at his feet, until he went up for 
that last great struggle in the city of Jerusalem ; 
and there we find it manifesting itself in all its 
intensity at the end. He enters into the garden, 
and he prays : " Father, if it be possible, let this 
cup pass from me. Father, if it be possible, do 
not crucify the world to me ; if it be possible, let 
me live and redeem the world ; if it be possible, 
bring men to the knowledge of what it is to be thy 
sons without this awful, shameful death ; neverthe- 
less, not my will, but thine, be done. If it must 
be done, then, Father, I will submit." 



THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



155 



That was the crucifixion of the world unto Christ. 
Everything that he touched, everything that he de- 
sired, one by one had fallen dead before him, until 
at last he stood out in the presence of his Father, 
forsaken of all men, without hope, without expecta- 
tion from the world. The world of things that could 
be seen or touched was dead to him, and he stood in 
the presence of his Father to do His will. 

Now, that same experience had come to Paul. 
Paul too had known the experience of his Mas- 
ter. He had desired to upbuild the Jewish Church, 
and had been very zealous in that faith, and had 
seen it die. He had desired to go up to Jerusalem 
after his conversion, and enter into the company 
of the Apostles, and unite himself with them, and do 
their work ; but they would not receive him. He 
had gone down to Antioch, and had the larger rev- 
elation of the Gospel which was to bring all men 
unto the worship of Jesus Christ. Then began the 
long and weary life when he was persecuted in every 
city, when every dream that he had ever had in the 
schools of Tarsus or the streets of Antioch was killed 
one after another. Read that wonderful story that 
he tells us in the Epistle to the Corinthians of 
what his life was : " In weariness and painfulness, 
in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings 
often, in cold and nakedness. Beside those things 



156 THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



that are without, that which cometh upon me daily, 
the care of all the churches." 

Paul's life was one long life of crucifixion. All 
that he loved, desired, and wished to attain was cast 
down, until at last he lay in the dark dungeon at 
Rome, waiting for the executioner that should lead 
him to his Lord. The world was crucified to him. 
What sorrow, what suffering, what disappointment, 
what agony of spirit, as one dream after another 
melted away, and he bowed his head in the power of 
his Master and said : " Lord, if this thorn depart 
not from me, thy will be done. The grace of God is 
better than the strength of man." 

Now, are there not some here — rather, do not 
all of us know something about this crucifixion of 
the world to ourselves ? The failure of health, the 
failure of property, the loss of those who are dear to 
us, the ending of our dreams, the beginning of that 
long life of tribulation without which we may not 
enter into the kingdom of God, — do we not know 
it, every one of us here to-day, each telling it to him- 
self as he stands under the shadow of the cross, each 
asking himself, What does the shedding of the blood 
of Jesus Christ mean for me ? Why is the cruci- 
fixion of the world necessary for me ? 0, what 
sorrows some of you have known, — what trials, 
what disappointments, what weariness of spirit ! 



THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



157 



What are we to say about it ? Let us try and 
say, as Paul did : " By the power of the cross of 
Christ, the world is crucified unto me ; those things 
which were once a power in my life, those things 
for which I once lived, without which it seemed im- 
possible that life would continue, have been taken 
from me ; and I bow my head and say, ' Not my 
will, but thine, God, be done.' " 

When we think of it, when we let our minds 
wander to-day beyond this little company that is 
gathered here, beyond all the companies that, 
throughout the world, are gathered together to-day 
under the shadow of the cross ; when we think how 
this crucifixion of the world unto the spirit of man 
is going on all over the world, in the darkness of 
Africa, where the Gospel has never been preached, 
in the twilight of Japan, where men know not 
whether to turn again to idols, or to the gracious 
Spirit that is now stretching out His hands unto 
them, — all through the world to-day there is going 
on the crucifixion of the world unto human spirits. 
Children born to die, women without strength for 
life's struggle, men meeting one disappointment after 
another, — a life of pain and suffering, sickness, 
agony, fearfulness, and death, — is not that a picture 
of this world to-day ? Men do not tell it to one 
another ; we do not know what is going on. But 
while I speak to you now, here in our own city, there 



158 THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



are men and women crying with great agony, " Lord 
God, take only this cup from me ; do not call on me 
to endure this sacrifice. 0, save to me some part 
of that world without which I cannot live ! " Think 
of their agony, their fear, the awfulness of the pain of 
the men and women who find that the world is cru- 
cified to them, and yet cannot bring themselves to be 
crucified to the world ! What is the suffering of any 
Christian, what is the suffering of Jesus Christ, my 
friends, compared with the agony, which he could 
not know, of the soul which refuses to bow down its 
head to God ? Every soul that has submitted, every 
soul that has said, " Lord, thy will be done ; I will 
bear it ; I do not understand it ; I cannot imagine 
why my life has been what it has been ; I do not 
know anything about it, but I will bow down my head 
and worship," — that soul has known what it is to 
have the world crucified unto it, to have one thing- 
after another which was the joy, the glory, and the 
strength of its life killed, and yet to live unto God. 

Now, the other side of it : " By which I am cru- 
cified unto the world." Turn back again to the life 
of the Master. We have seen what it was for the 
world to be crucified to Him. See what it meant for 
Him to be crucified to the world. There were certain 
things which Jesus wanted above all things, as we 
learn from the Gospel story, especially the Gospel of 



THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



159 



Saint John. He wanted to save this world, and he 
went up to Jerusalem and saw that it was all to end 
in failure, as men count failure. And one day as he 
stood on the steps of the temple, there came to him 
one of his disciples, and said that there were certain 
Greeks that had come up to the festival and desired 
to see him, and Jesus's spirit arose at one bound to 
the thought of the glory which was now opening 
before him, and he stretched out his hands to receive 
those Greeks, and to make known to the world at 
large that Gospel which was being rejected by the 
Jews, and then drew back and said, "Father, my 
soul is troubled." It was like the stream that dashes 
down the mountain side to reach the ocean, and finds 
its way blocked by some great boulder that has 
rolled down the mountain and choked the current of 
the stream. The stream is troubled, and knows not 
whether it is to pass all barriers and reach the ocean, 
or whether it is to turn and climb again the hill from 
which it has descended. So it was with Jesus. He 
knew not what to do. " Now is my soul troubled, 
and what shall I say ? Father, save me from this 
hour : but for this cause came I unto this hour. 
Father, glorify thy name." That was the prayer. 
The world had been crucified to him, he would be 
crucified to the world. He would not accept this 
opening that was coming for a larger revelation of 
the Gospel, because to do so would be to turn away 



160 



THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



from the Father. u O Father, glorify thy name. Yes, 
the Gospel I do wish to preach beyond all other 
things ; but if that is not the way, then thy will be 
done. Glorify Thyself in some way." 

And when it was done, see the peace that came 
to him, and how he calmly turned to those men 
and said, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the 
ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it 
bringeth forth much fruit. I know the Father's will ; 
I am crucified to the world ; I will die and bring 
forth fruit." He desired to save those Jews whom 
he loved with exceeding great love, whom he desired 
above all to know the truth and the grace of God. 
And one day as he stood talking to those men in 
Jerusalem, and saw that every effort he made re- 
sulted in failure ; that they deliberately tried to trap 
him in his talk, that they might have something to 
accuse him of before the governor; that in every 
way he was thwarted and hindered, he crucified him- 
self unto the world, and said to them, "When ye 
have lifted up the Son of man, then ye shall know 
that I am he. It will not end in failure. Ye will 
not hear my words. Ye will not come to me that ye 
might have life. Ye will crucify me ; then shall ye 
know that I am he." In order that they might know 
that he was the Son of God, the Messiah, the Chosen 
of Israel, their Saviour, he would be crucified ; and 
when they had worked out their sinful will upon him, 



THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



161 



having bowed his head and given up the ghost, there 
were men that would cry, " Truly, this was the Son 
of God." 

How many things we might speak of in which the 
Master crucified himself to the world. In that last 
great struggle in the garden of which we have spoken, 
in which the world was being crucified unto him, his 
first prayer was, "If it be possible, let this cup pass 
from me " ; but it was not the last. Jesus prayed 
again, "Father, thy will be done" ; and the strength 
came to him, and he rose calm and placid, full of 
serenity and sweetness, dignity and power, — no trace 
of the agony, no trace of the sweat, no trace of the 
anguish of spirit. And when poor Peter comes with 
his sword and says, " Lord, shall we smite with the 
sword?" he answers, "I could pray to my Father, 
and instantly have legions of angels. But how could 
the Scripture be fulfilled ? " To fulfil the Scripture, 
to carry out that word that God had been prophesying 
through the spirit of man in all the ages, Jesus would 
crucify himself unto the world. After that there was 
no more conflict. He had power to lay down his life, 
and he had power to take it again. That power came 
to him because the world had been crucified, because 
he had crucified himself unto the world, — the power 
to lay down his life, and the power to take it again, — 
that was the triumph of the Master. 

Paul knew that triumph also. Paul also had been 
11 



162 THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



through that awful experience of the crucifixion of 
the world unto himself, and had been through the 
other experience of crucifying himself unto the 
world, of submitting to God's will. Yes, that 
was the first step ; but far more than that of 
rejoicing in God's will, of being so glad God's will 
should be accomplished, of being so full of joy be- 
cause God should be known to him more and more, 
and God's presence should be a benediction upon his 
life, that nothing seemed too hard unto Paul for him 
to do ; and he spoke these words that we find so 
difficult to understand, until at least we begin to 
crucify ourselves unto the world : " I rejoice in tribu- 
lation." " When I am weak, then am I strong." 
" None of these things move me, neither count I 
my life dear unto myself, so that 1 might finish 
my course with joy, and the ministry which I have 
received of the Lord Jesus." 

What a different spirit, what a new thought, what 
a splendid ideal, had taken possession of this man ! 
He had crucified himself unto the world ; the things 
for which he had lived, which stood all about his 
life, — wealth, learning, success, popularity, — these 
things no longer moved him ; he cared not for 
them. His life had a new ideal ; it was to finish 
the work of his Master, and accomplish the min- 
istry that had been committed unto him by the Lord 
Jesus Christ. 



THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



163 



Now, any man or woman who, having passed 
through the awful conflict of crucifying the world 
unto himself, rises into that higher experience of 
sacrifice, the power by which he crucifies himself 
unto the world, — offers himself a willing sacrifice 
unto God, — has received the blessing of the cross 
of Jesus Christ. 

And if what we have said be true, then we need 
not say much about the glory, because that glory 
follows so inevitably from this thought. For what 
would have been the life of Paul, — ay, what would 
have been the life of the Master, — if the world had 
not been crucified unto him? How satisfied Paul 
might have been with the things he saw and heard ! 
How possible it was that the Master should have 
lived out a long life and died in his old age, no 
man knowing the glory of the cross ! But it was 
because he allowed the world to be crucified unto 
him, and crucified himself unto the world, that he 
began to walk that path that led to Calvary, and 
endured all the sufferings of which we read to-day. 
And out of it came the glory, the certainty that 
he was doing God's will, — the consciousness, real- 
ized for the first time in the history of man, that 
the glory of man consists, not in having his own 
way, not in following up the little scheme of life 
with which he had begun, but that the real glory 
of man consists in finding the will of God, in sub- 



164 THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



mitting himself absolutely to it. Thus submitting 
himself, one knows the glory which comes to him 
who knows and sees and serves God, because his 
life has been caught up from the low plane on 
which it used to stand, and is now on the Mount of 
Transfiguration, filled with eternal life. 

If there be any one here to-day, my friends, who 
is all confused and perplexed about his life, then let 
him turn to the cross of Jesus Christ. 

You may wonder that I have said nothing about 
sin ; you may wonder that I have said nothing about 
a redemption from sin by the cross. But indeed, 
if I have made myself plain, I have been talking 
about the redemption from sin all the time. For 
what is sin? — not in its manifestation, but in its 
root ? It is selfishness ; it is self-centredness ; it 
is the life apart from God. And through the agony 
of the crucifixion of the world unto himself, and 
through the sorrow and the suffering of the weeks 
of crucifixion of self unto the world, the Master did 
the will of the Father, and entered into such com- 
munion with the Father as never was possible until 
the very springs of his life were discovered, and the 
balm of God's love could enter into the very pierced 
heart. Then he knew the glory ; then he would not 
have turned back from the cross ; and the jeers that 
fell on his dying ear, "If thou be the Son of God, 



THE DOUBLE CRUCIFIXION. 



165 



save thyself and come down from the cross," had 
no power, because he was upheld as he never could 
have been upheld but by the love and the power of 
the Father. 

" Neither count I my life dear unto myself." The 
man that can say that has had the root of sin de- 
stroyed in him. It has been the cross of Jesus 
Christ that has revealed unto us that sorrow does 
not mean the wrath of God, but that sorrow may be 
the path of the elect by which they may walk to their 
eternal glory ; and that the splendor and the glory 
and the power of life are found in that moment when 
the human soul has not only yielded itself to God, 
but even in the shedding of its blood has cried to God 
for that strength and that joy and that peace and that 
glory which belong to the sons of God, and which 
only the selfishness of sin prevents entering into the 
life of every one of us. 

" God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross 
of our Lord Jesus Christ." The world has been 
crucified unto me, and I am being crucified unto 
the world ; may that be, if not the profession of 
our experience, at least the deepest prayer that we 
put up to-day, as we stand by the cross of Jesus 
Christ. 



XII. 



THE NATURALNESS OF THE RESURRECTION. 



For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself ; first the 
blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. 
— St. Mark, iv. 28. 

TT7HAT is it that constitutes growth? What are 



* v its essential conditions? The first is a seed 
containing potentiality, and the second is the ever 
present, all-powerful surrounding soil. Given those 
two things, a seed containing within itself poten- 
tiality and an earth or nature full of power sur- 
rounding the seed, and the result will be that the 
earth will bring forth fruit of herself ; first the blade, 
then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear. 
Look at these words in the original, and you will see 
that the saying is stronger than it appears here in 
our English translation. What Jesus really said was, 
" The earth bringeth forth fruit automatically." 

There is no miracle about the growing of the things 
upon this earth. That is the conclusion that we have 
come to as the result of all the study of nature that 
has occupied the minds of men now for so many 




NATURALNESS OF THE RESURRECTION. 167 



years : that there is nothing miraculous in the pro- 
cess that is going on here upon this planet, and that 
there is nothing miraculous in the result produced 
by the action of all-powerful forces upon infinite pos- 
sibilities. There is nothing miraculous, never any 
intervention of external power in the long process ; 
and no miracle, no flashing down of Divine power 
from the heavens above to produce at the end the 
glory toward which that thing which was hidden in 
the dark earth has been tending, through the dark- 
ness up into the light. Nothing miraculous at all. 

And philosophy has reached the same conclusion. 
Given what we see here upon this earth, and man, 
the family, society, state, and church, have automati- 
cally been evolved. There is no miracle in the 
process. There is no miracle in the result. How 
modern this word of Jesus sounds : " The earth 
bringeth forth fruit automatically ; first the blade, 
then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." 

Is that the last word that the student of nature or 
that the philosopher has to say about the process and 
the product of life ? It is not. No miracle in the 
growth, no miracle in the result. But turn over the 
seed and dissect it : lay it open. It is not that which 
we see on the outside that is the seed. Lay it open 
once more. It is not that which we then see which 
contains within it the potentiality of the lusty blade, 
and the strong stalk, and the flaming calyx, and the 



168 NATURALNESS OF THE RESURRECTION. 

luscious fruit. A little farther, and yet it is not even 
that. At last we come to something so minute that 
the eye of man can no longer trace it, and placed 
under the microscope we are not sure that the eye 
has seen that in which the secret and mystery of life 
is hid. That in that little embryo, curled all about 
within its surrounding nourishment, there should 
lie the potentiality of the oak that shall spread its 
mighty branches over the plain, — that that should 
be, is the miracle and wonder of life. 

Given that, given that seed, and given also a na- 
ture surrounding that seed, pulsating through every 
atom of matter in order that that seed may develop 
its potentiality into perfect actuality, — that is the 
other mystery and miracle of life ; — a miracle, a 
mystery, a wonder, that all men are beginning to feel 
to-day as they have never felt before, and to cry, 
Back of all phenomena lies the unfathomable abyss 
of wonder. But given the wonder, given the seed, 
and given the surrounding earth, and then the growth 
of the blade and the ear and the full corn in the ear 
is automatic. There is no miracle in the process nor 
in the result, because the miracle is at the beginning. 

Apply these thoughts to the story that we have 
come together to-day to hear recounted once more, 
and on account of which to sing our praise and 
thanksgiving unto God, — the story of the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus Christ. 



NATURALNESS OF THE RESURRECTION. 169 



There are men, perhaps they are here, who say that 
the whole thing is so incredible that it really ought 
not to be considered amongst thoughtful people. 

And so it is incredible, my friends. If we are 
called upon to believe that God Almighty, for some 
caprice, for some reason that no one of us can under- 
stand, suddenly violated the whole course and order 
of his universe, and lifted up out of the sepulchre 
a dead man, and set him on his feet again, I believe 
it no more than you do. But when I turn to these 
words of Jesus, I find that what we are apt to call 
the miracle disappears ; or, at any rate, the miracle 
is not to be found in the story of Easter, but in the 
long journeys through Galilee and the birth at Beth- 
lehem. 

Given that seed, and that result is automatic ; there 
is nothing miraculous about it. Given that life, and 
the perpetually surrounding power and love of God 
acting upon that life, being reacted back upon by that 
life, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ is no mir- 
acle. It was automatic ; it was inevitable. Why, the 
miracle, the wonder, the monstrous abortion, would 
have been that that seed, that life, which all human- 
ity had been thirsting and hungering to see and feed 
upon, — that that life should have rotted, soul and 
body, outside the walls of Jerusalem. That would 
be the mystery. 

Look back for one moment again at nature. Think 



170 NATURALNESS OF THE RESURRECTION. 



of the great number of seeds, my friends, that have 
fallen into the earth and perished, — that never have 
made a sign of putting forth blade, or ear, or the full 
corn in the ear. The great multitude that has per- 
ished ! Supposing any one had lived upon this planet 
before the glories with which we deck our church 
to-day had been evolved, and had said, The day will 
come when the perfect seed will be planted in the 
earth, and apparently die ; but because of its infi- 
nite potentiality, because of its perfection, includ- 
ing within itself all that which the dying seeds have 
striven for and failed to attain, that seed, being 
acted upon by the ever-present power of the earth, 
will live, and put forth a finger above the earth, and 
reach up an arm that at last will hold the glory of 
the fruit in the presence of the sun. Would it not 
have seemed incredible that any such thing should 
come to pass ? Yet every flower in this church, 
every glory with which your house is decked to-day, 
every blossom that you lay upon the grave of your 
little child, is the fulfilment of the prophecy of 
nature, that the day would come when the seeds 
would die, and yet live ; not by miracle, but natu- 
rally and inevitably, because they had within them- 
selves that which the dying seeds had not, — the 
power of life. 

That is the story of Jesus Christ. That a man 
walked this earth who heard the voice that every hu- 



NATURALNESS OF THE RESURRECTION. 171 



man being had heard from the beginning, — "My son, 
give me thine heart," — and he gave it to God, — 
gave it as you and I have never dreamed of giving. 
When he was a little child, when he walked the 
hills of Galilee, when he went into the temple at 
Jerusalem, when he lay down in the garden, sweat- 
ing there in the agony that preceded his death, 
when he was nailed upon the cross, in death itself, 
he answered the voice of God that had been heard in 
every human heart and never perfectly responded to 
before, — " My son, give me thine heart." " My 
Father, I give thee my heart" 

He was the only man that ever walked this earth 
that was filled with love for God and man. You and 
I have known moments when God seemed very near 
to us, when we were filled with the joy of God, when 
all things temporal seemed as naught, when to serve 
our fellow men seemed to us the best thing possible 
in the world. But that was the experience of Jesus 
Christ day by day ; the love of God was in him all 
the time. He heard the voice that we all have 
heard, saying, " Hope maketh not ashamed ; endure 
all that comes ; there are better things prepared for 
you." And for the joy that was set before him he 
endured the cross, despising the shame, believing 
that he would be set down at the right hand of the 
throne of God. 

He heard the voice that we all have heard, saying, 



172 NATURALNESS OF THE RESURRECTION. 

" My commandment is eternal life." You and I 
have only here and there answered to the meaning of 
that word, but Jesus answered perfectly. Faith and 
love and joy and hope and obedience, the things that 
you and I strive after fitfully from time to time, were 
all of them exemplified in every word and thought 
and deed of Jesus's life. 

Here was a seed the like of which the world had 
never seen before, the mystery of which can no more 
be explained than the mystery that lies hidden in the 
embryo from which the tree, in good time, shall 
wave. 

That is the story of Easter day : that this trust, 
this love, this joy, this hope in God, were justified. 
He lay down his life for us, saying with his last 
breath, I will see you again, and your heart will re- 
joice with that joy that no man can take from you. 
The story of Easter is that the faith and hope and 
love of Jesus Christ were justified by the resurrec- 
tion from the dead. 

And if you ask me what that means, I cannot tell 
you ; and no man can tell you what it means. Only 
this : that on that Sunday those men that had laid 
that broken body away knew, as well as you and I 
know that we see one another, that the presence that 
was amongst them was the presence of Jesus Christ. 

The earth bringeth forth fruit of itself. Given the 
perfect human seed, given the Divine presence, never 



NATURALNESS OF THE RESURRECTION. 173 



failing human love, Divine love, human trust, Divine 
strength, human hope, Divine joy, acting, reacting, 
one upon another, the result will be eternal life, 
inevitably. 

And if you ask, How is it, then, that we do not see 
those now who have gone away ? I know not what to 
answer you, for I would not deceive you with trying 
to pretend I know more than I am ready to say in the 
church of God, ready to say to the face of every one 
of you. But this, my friends, we must admit : that 
there have been men and women not a few who have 
believed that across the river they have seen strange 
shadows move, and that a voice has come to them out 
of the mystery, and a presence has nerved their arm 
to mightier labor, and lifted up their hearts in better 
love. 

I know not. I do not dogmatize. But if I am 
asked why that is not a common experience, for my- 
self I answer this : that I believe the reason is that 
those we love have not yet risen into that perfect life 
which God is leading them to more and more in that 
other world, as he led them more and more in this. 

Only one risen life has ever been seen, because only 
one eternal life was ever seen before death. And if 
those we love, or if you and I, were perfect as Jesus 
is perfect, we would be able to manifest ourselves 
after death to those who have felt the influence of 



174 NATURALNESS OF THE RESURRECTION. 



our presence, as those disciples felt the influence of 
the presence of Jesus Christ, not by a miracle, but 
naturally. 

For this is the alternative : either the faith and 
love and joy of Jesus Christ were justified, and he is 
alive to-day with the Father in whom he believed and 
whom he served, or that life has been blotted out, 
soul and body. For were Jesus alive, it could not 
have failed that he would have shown himself in 
some way to the men who put their whole trust in 
him ; and if he did not show himself to those men so 
as to convince them that he who had been dead yet 
was alive, then we have the other mystery, namely, 
this assembly here to-day. 

That tradition has been an everlasting power from 
the morning that John and Peter, breathless, ran to 
the sepulchre and looked in and saw that the body 
was gone, and turned their faces and saw one amongst 
them like unto the Son of Man, and went forth to 
preach, and to die preaching, that Jesus Christ was 
raised again from the dead. It is no miracle. It is 
the natural and inevitable result of such a seed in 
such a soil. 

What shall we do with the story ? What shall the 
Gospel of this day be to you and me ? Shall we com- 
fort ourselves with it, saying to ourselves, Well, if it 
be true, then those who have passed from us have 



NATURALNESS OF THE RESURRECTION. 175 



gone into the eternal life, and have joy and peace to- 
day with God ? 

Yes ; say that to yourselves to begin with. Let 
that thought take possession of you, so that you know 
to-day that they are alive, in peace and joy, filled with 
a larger hope, going on from strength to strength, 
satisfied with what God has brought to them. Let 
that thought take possession of you, but do not stop 
there. 

This call of Easter day, my friends, is the call to 
every one of us from the unnatural life that we are 
living to the natural life that Jesus revealed. The 
unnatural life is the life of fear, is the life of con- 
tempt, of scorn, — uncharitable, lustful, mean. But 
the natural life, the life that Jesus lived, is the life 
of trust, of love, of peace, of joy, of labor, of eternal 
hope. 

It is a call to every one of us to the eternal life. 
That eternal life is natural, and they who lead the 
natural life of Jesus Christ shall know the power of 
the endless life. Each one of you, my friends, each 
one of you, who must surely lay down his life and be 
put in the dust, — each one of you may find the truth 
of the meaning of the word of Jesus. "The earth 
bringeth forth fruit of herself ; first the blade, then 
the ear, after that the full corn in the ear." 

0, if God, through his power pressing upon your 
life, through his love flowing into you, through his 



176 NATURALNESS OF THE RESURRECTION. 



joy that surrounds you, through his hope that is 
lifted before you, now, on this Easter day, will lift 
any one of you from the unnatural life to the natu- 
ral life of Jesus Christ, I tell you that you, like those 
two disciples of whom we have read, will go away 
unto your own homes knowing the power of the 
resurrection. 

Cast away to-day your sin. Break away to-day 
from your old habit. Put your whole trust and love 
upon God, and strive to live the life of Jesus Christ ; 
and that which to-day is only the blade in most of 
you, which in some of you is the ear, will, in God's 
good time, in all of us, in the everlasting harvest of 
the eternal life, be, to his glory, the full corn in the 
ear. 

0, may God bless and fill you with his peace, and 
with his joy, and with his love ; for if you have that 
the things of time are as nothing at all ; you are 
walking as those who are redeemed by the blood of 
Jesus Christ, and justified by his resurrection. 



XIII. 



THE NEW BIRTH. 

Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when 
he is old ? — St. John, iii. 4. 

TT was my privilege to speak to you last Sunday of 
the words which precede our text. We saw that 
our Lord said that no man could see the kingdom of 
God unless he was born again, and the question that 
arose in Nicodemus's mind I think arises in our 
minds : How is this new birth, this birth from above, 
to take place ? Nicodemus says, It seems as impos- 
sible as physical re-birth. When a man is old, his 
character is supposed to be fixed. Now how can that 
man change his character when it has once become 
fixed, when he is old ? 

Of course the question assumes a position that 
Jesus would have been far from admitting. It as- 
sumes that there comes a time in a man's life when 
his character is fixed, when it is impossible for him 
to change. But that is to deny that man is a child of 
God ; for it assumes that a time comes when man 
loses the power of turning to God, or that the power 

12 



178 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



of God exhausts itself, and that is to deny that God 
is the Eternal Father of mankind. 

Jesus answered the question, not by argument, but 
by reference to history. He seemed to have been sur- 
prised that such a question should have come from 
the lips of one of the masters of Israel. He said, 
" Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these 
things ? " The necessity for new birth, the possibility 
of new birth even when a man is old,— the whole 
history of Israel testifies to this thing. 

There was Abraham who was no longer a youth, 
who was the possessor of much that men labor all 
their lives to acquire ; but he walked out under the 
stars at night, and felt that the stars did not govern 
the destiny of man. He heard a voice saying, Come 
out of this old life and I will reveal myself to you. 
And he believed God, and went out, born again when 
he was old. 

Jacob's life was a still more forcible illustration of 
it. A man who began with a twist in his character, a 
man who began life all wrong, who was the manifesta- 
tion of everything that is hateful in the child life, — 
cunning, lying, deceit, selfishness, — was changed ; 
and that too when he was old, when he had become 
a father, when he had gathered herds and multi- 
tudes about him, people dependent upon him, and had 
become a great chief in the land in which he was. 
That man, touched by the finger of God, was born 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



179 



anew, having revealed to him at once his own impo- 
tence and the everlasting power of God. 

Moses, the violent man, the man that supposed that 
the wrath of man works the righteousness of God, 
was born again. When he was old, there appeared to 
him one who showed to him the sanctity of life, and 
called him to go in the name of the Eternal and bring 
forth the people out of Egypt. 

Saul was born anew. It became a proverb, u Is 
Saul also among the prophets ? " He saw the mean- 
ing of the kingdom of God, and for a while he entered 
into it. 

Amos was born anew. A farmer, a man whose 
life's purpose seemed fulfilled when he had finished 
his appointed task, gathered the figs, carried them to 
the market, and sold them. It seemed as if there was 
nothing more for that man to do. But the spirit of 
God came upon him, and he became a great prophet 
to Israel. 

Now Jesus looks into the face of this teacher of 
Israel, and says, " Art thou a master of Israel, and 
knowest not these things?" 

Those are the lives that are recorded, but what are 
they compared with the multitude of lives that are 
not recorded ? the men and the women who had 
begun wrong and become right? the men and the 
women that had grown to be old, in selfishness, in 
indifference, in sin, and yet were renewed by the 



180 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



power of God and became new creatures ? Ay, Nico- 
demus in his own experience must have known men 
and women who had begun life wrong who now were 
servants of Jehovah. 

Jesus does not argue with him. He simply refers 
him to history. He simply calls his attention to his 
own experience. How is it that thou dost not know 
these things ? 

Is it necessary to say more ? The whole history of 
the Christian Church bears witness to this same fact- 
It is not necessary to enumerate them. Paul and 
Augustine come into the minds of all us. Bunyan 
and Wesley are there too. Men and women that you 
and I have known have been born anew when they 
were old, when it seemed to them and seemed to 
others that their character was fixed. 

But there is another question implied in the words 
of Nicodemus. Supposing the possibility, what is 
the process of the new birth ? How are we to think 
about it ? 

There are two ways in which men may think about 
it. One is to suppose that it is entirely dependent 
upon themselves, — that when they see fit they can 
change themselves and become different men. I do 
not think there are many who think that, but there 
are some. There are others, and they form an im- 
mense majority of the people who think about this 



THE NEW BIRTH. 181 



subject at all, who are under the impression that it is 
a thing that a man has got nothing to do with ; that 
when the Divine Spirit sees fit to speak to a man, then 
the man will and must respond, but that he is as im- 
potent to draw down the Spirit of God to brood upon 
his soul and quicken it as is the seed in the ground 
to dissipate the clouds and cause the sun to strike 
down beneath the earth and quicken it. How such 
an opinion has arisen it is not necessary for us to 
discuss. The important thing is to call our atten- 
tion to it, that if possible we may banish it from our 
minds. 

Jesus said, " Except a man be born of water and of 
the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." 
Now what does that mean ? Water and the Spirit ; 
the lower and the higher ; the human and the divine ; 
the co-operation of these two essential elements in 
life, water and air ; — unless these two combine, man 
cannot be born again, his character cannot be changed. 
But lest Nicodemus should become confused about 
this matter, he went on to say : " You hear the wind 
blowing ; you cannot tell whence it comes, you can- 
not tell where it is going. That is the way of every 
one that is born of the Spirit." That is to say, the 
Divine power and influence are working all the time 
upon humanity. There never is a moment when the 
wind is not breathing over some part of this universe ; 
there never is a moment when that outgoing of God's 



182 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



life which we call the Holy Spirit is not breathing 
upon humanity. 

Does a man ask how the new birth is produced ? 
It is by the co-operation of the human and the Divine. 
This parable has been fixed by the Church, by Christ 
himself, in the symbol of baptism. The water is the 
human element, and that which it symbolizes is the 
human power of purification. That, put in the tech- 
nical language of theology, is called repentance. Re- 
pentance ! What does it mean ? It does not mean 
weeping, tearing the hair, rending the clothes. It 
does not mean looking back over the past life and 
lamenting all that has gone before. It is not in the 
power of some men so to look back upon their lives ; 
it is not in the power of some of us to weep ; I think 
the word is an unfortunate one. The Greek word 
would have shown us at once what Jesus meant: 
(jLeravoia means to change your mind. 

Now the man that changes his mind purifies him- 
self. He turns away from the old thing that has had 
dominion over him, and turns to the new, to which 
he now desires to devote himself. It is inevitable 
that in such a moment there shall come into a man's 
mind a disgust for the past life, — the life of selfish- 
ness, the life of low ideals, the life of contentment with 
self and with selfish surroundings. There will come 
a disgust in the man's soul, and he will say, Is it 
possible that I was made for this, that this is the end 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



183 



and object of my life ? — to go down town every morn- 
ing and back again at night, to see more beautiful 
things year by year in my house, to gather my books 
about me, to learn a little more, to make myself more 
comfortable ? Is it possible that this is the last ex- 
pression of life, the outcome of all the Divine power 
that has been moving in the universe since the fiery 
clouds first filled the firmament ? Is this the out- 
come of it ? An animal, comfortable, respecting him- 
self, respected of his fellow men ? Is this the end ? 
Is there no higher term of existence ? 

My friends, when a man looks back over his life 
and knows that if he has not reached the limit of 
his powers, and is horrified that this should be the 
end, then that man begins to repent, that man changes 
his mind, that man sets himself to reach a nobler 
and a better ideal. Repentance means, in the simple 
words of the Catechism that we teach the children, 
when we ask them what is required of those who 
come to be baptized, " Repentance whereby we for- 
sake sin." The human element in the new birth is 
repentance ; the human element is the changing of 
the mind, the setting of a new and better ideal before 
one's self with the intention of realizing it. 

Now, of course, by itself we may say that is useless. 
But with it goes the Divine, — the Divine co-operat- 
ing with the human, the consciousness of pardon, the 
assurance of peace, the revelation of love, the manifes- 



184 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



tation of the glory of God, the meaning of the new 
life that was manifested and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. 
That is God's part of it. 

Do you ask me whether God fails? I might an- 
swer, as Jesus did to Nicodemus, the history of the 
Church will reply to that. Have you ever known a 
man to repent, have you ever known a man deter- 
mined to go home to his father, whom you did not 
see the father coming out to meet ? We have never 
known such a case. Ay, in our own experience we 
have never at any particular moment of our lives 
repented of any harsh word, unworthy deed, or foul 
thought that the Spirit of God did not enter through 
the doorway that we had burst open in our effort to 
escape from the prison-house of sin. It is so all 
through life. 

How are we to discuss it? Is the new birth divine, 
or is it human ? The ship lies by the wharf, the sails 
are on the deck. It is a lifeless mass of wood or iron. 
The breeze ripples the waters of the harbor. Now, 
then, what shall change the ship into a living thing, — 
the sails or the wind ? Which causes the ship to go ? 
What a foolish question ! The sails are hoisted, the 
winds play upon them, and the thing that a moment 
ago seemed dead is now alive, speeding to the harbor 
that the master intends it to reach. 

Is it the sap in the tree or the sun in the heavens 
that causes the fruit to ripen ? What a foolish ques- 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



185 



tion ! It is the kissing of the bud by the sun, and 
the rising of sap within it, that causes the luscious 
fruit to ripen. 

Is it man or God that is the cause of man's salva- 
tion ? What a foolish question ! There are moments 
when we say, " We have done that which we ought 
not to have done/' That means we have done that 
which we knew we had the power not to do. That 
is the assertion of man's inherent strength. And 
almost in the same breath we cry, " We have no 
health in us," we have no salvation within our- 
selves. There is the confession of human weakness. 
It is the water and the Spirit. It is the combina- 
tion of the Divine and the human that causes the 
new character to appear and enter into the kingdom 
of heaven. 

I say, that has been fixed in the symbol of Chris- 
tian baptism. And what does that mean ? It means, 
my friends, that the door of entrance to the Chris- 
tian Church is the symbol of that which is the very 
Gospel of the Christian Church. The incarnation of 
Jesus Christ is the manifestation of the oneness be- 
tween man and God. It ought to destroy forever 
that dualism that exists in so many men's minds, 
and perplexes them in regard to their position and in 
regard to God's work upon them. Man and God, the 
incarnation has revealed, are one ; and every human 



186 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



being, because he is a son of man, is potentially a son 
of God. 

It seems to some of you as if this meant nothing. 
It means everything. We walk in the early summer ; 
we walk through the highways and by the hedges in 
the country, and the children pick a little flower, so 
small and insignificant that it seems hardly worth 
their while to gather it. And they bring it to the 
father, and say, Father, what is the name of this 
little, insignificant flower ? And he says, It is a 
rose. And they say, no ; it is not a rose, it is 
not a rose at all. What shall we call it ? You may 
call it the blossom of the blackberry, if you will, but 
why not name it by its highest name ? Why not 
claim this wild thing of the fields, and say, It is the 
sister of the glory of your garden at home, — it is 
essentially a rose ? It has to go through many a 
transformation, it has to improve, it has to be culti- 
vated, and made stronger, and nobler, and better. 
Then the perfume will be more satisfying. Then 
the color will flash out from it, as it seems to realize 
that it belongs and is akin to the queen of all the 
flowers. 

So we say to man, You are a son of God. And he 
says, I am not a son of God ; I am a sinner, I am 
careless, I am indifferent ; I am not a son of God. 
We say to that man, My friend, you are a son of God, 
and the glory of your life begins on the day when 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



187 



you recognize yourself as the son of God, and by 
the water of repentance and by the illumination of 
the Spirit are born into the consciousness of what 
you are. 

I said to you last Sunday, We have all been born 
once as men, as intelligent beings. But the day was 
when there was no such thing upon this earth as a 
man. We have been born from the lower animals, 
you and I ; but few of us are ever born anew into the 
better life which begins with the consciousness that 
though we are animals yet we are the sons of God. 
There is need of the new birth. We have been born 
out of the old animal life, and the struggle of life is 
to cast it off, and the glory of life is to enter into that 
higher life which begins — not ends, but begins — 
with the consciousness that we are the sons of the 
living God. 

Now in all this, my friends, these two elements are 
at work all the time, — the human and the divine. 
There is no part of life in which the higher is not 
touching the lower, in which the lower is not quick- 
ened by the higher. So it must be in your life and 
mine. 

And now, in closing what I have to say to you 
about confirmation, let me say one word ; because I 
fear, my friends, that it is possible that in these fre- 
quent appeals to you to do that which does seem to 



188 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



me to be the most essential thing in your life, namely, 
acknowledge yourselves as disciples of Jesus Christ 
and enter into the company thereof, in order that 
society, business, politics, the world, the family, the 
individual self, may be changed, — there is danger, I 
say of a misconception, and that is this. 

We plead with you, we argue with you, we try to 
induce you to do what Jesus Christ commanded and 
asked ; and there are men that actually say to them- 
selves, Well, it seems very important that I should 
be brought into the Church ; it seems very impor- 
tant to the Church that it should gain me. And they 
actually by means of the Gospel are hardened in their 
own self-sufficiency ! 

Yes, my friends, the Church wants you. The 
Church wants every human being, because God wants 
every human being. But it wants you that it may 
honor you, and glorify you, and inspire you. It does 
not want you to patronize God, nor to pity Jesus 
Christ the King. When he walked to his throne, the 
cross, the women wailed and lamented him. But he 
said, " Weep not for me ; weep for yourselves and for 
your children." 

That any man should go through life, — any man 
upon whom the power of God has been working since 
he was born to bring him to the glory and dignity 
and majesty that belong to him as a son of God, and 
miss it all, — that is indeed an awful catastrophe. 



THE NEW BIRTH. 



189 



It is the tragedy of life. Not sorrow, not death, not 
disappointment, not failure, but not to know the love 
of God, and the glory of Jesus Christ, and the power 
of the Spirit, — that is the failure of life. There was 
a certain man that built his house upon the sand, 
and great was the fall of it. Is that to be the epi- 
taph of you or me ? I pray God not, and yet that it 
must be unless we found the house of our character 
upon the Rock. 



XIV. 



THE SUFFICIENCY OF EVIL. 

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. 

St. Matthew, vi. 34. 

SOONER or later all teachers and philosophers are 
brought face to face with the problem of evil, 
and are expected by their disciples to give some ex- 
planation of it. All of these may be divided into two. 
1st. Evil is inherent in matter, and peace can only 
be obtained by its extinction. This was the belief of 
one of the best men the world has ever seen, Buddha. 
2d. Evil is inherent in the mind. There is no such 
thing as evil. Things become evil by means of the 
action of men's minds. u There 's nothing either 
good or bad but thinking makes it so." This was 
the teaching of another of the best men the world 
has ever seen, Epictetus. 

Both of these great teachers gave rules for over- 
coming evil. Buddha admonished to self-abnega- 
tion, the destruction of the instrument of sensibility. 
Epictetus taught self-control, destruction of mental 
activity. 



THE SUFFICIENCY OF EVIL. 191 



Jesus enunciated no theory of evil. He recognized 
it as a fact to be dealt with, not to be explained. And 
he believed of this, as of everything else, that it could 
be turned to good account in the education of man's 
character. But there was another way in which he 
differed from these great teachers : he not only did 
not enunciate a theory of the origin of evil, but he 
did not believe that man alone could work out his 
salvation. He as well as Buddha taught that if your 
eye causes you to offend, you must pluck it out ; he as 
well as Epictetus taught that no circumstances mat- 
tered to him who had the inward peace. But in both 
the power arose from the consciousness that the 
Father was with him. 

It was in that spirit that he came to the considera- 
tion of this awful problem of evil. He had no soph- 
isms to explain it away ; he had no theory by which 
man might escape from it. Here it is, — an awful in- 
explicable mystery. Here is man with his affections, 
and hopes, and desires ; and here too is sickness, 
and failure, and death. Over against each column of 
the temple of life lies the dark shadow that chills and 
frightens. The disciples turn to Jesus, and he says, 
" The evil of each day is sufficient." What does he 
mean ? Why, he means : Do not waste life in trying 
to evolve a theory of the origin of this mystery. But 
rise rather to the thought of God your father, and 
recognize that he governs, — that he lets no more evil 



192 



THE SUFFICIENCY OF EVIL. 



into your life than he knows is good for it. Each day 
has sufficient. Life being what it is, if there were 
none you could not be educated by faith, if there were 
too much your life would be crushed. However evil 
arose, God governs it. 

How ? By divisions of time. Our life is divided, like 
a ship, into compartments. Though one be flooded, 
the others remain free. But for that no life could 
grow to virtue. But by means of this the life is pro- 
tected. Each division has its allotted evil, but not 
the evil of another. Infancy has indeed its helpless- 
ness, but nothing more. And with its helplessness 
goes constant care. Childhood chafes under its ap- 
pointed tasks, but knows nothing of the burden of 
responsibility. Early manhood is heated with pas- 
sion, but does not feel the chill of avarice. Maturity 
walks slow under the burden of responsibility, but its 
steps are guided by clear judgment. Old age knows 
much of partings, but also the evening calm free from 
the burning heat of ambition. 

Thus our life is guarded. God made us to en- 
dure our share of evil, and apportioned that evil so 
that it might do good. But what life would that 
be which anticipated the evil of its age, — the in- 
fant on whom tasks were laid, the child who burned 
with passion, the youth on whom fell all the burden 
of life at once, the man whose burden had to be 



THE SUFFICIENCY OF EVIL. 



193 



borne with the infirmities of old age and the fever 
of ambition ? 

That which observation teaches of the larger di- 
visions of time Jesus is trying to teach us of the 
smaller. Sufficient for each day, he says, is its own 
evil. Here too the evil is controlled by God's wise 
laws. In the natural order of things only a certain 
number of events can come into a given time. Then 
follows sleep, and again we have to meet the events 
which come marching out of eternity toward us. 
Not only so. Not only is the number limited, but 
the possibility of their reception is limited too. Only 
a certain amount of sensibility is possible in a given 
time. When the messenger announced to Job the 
theft of his asses and oxen, he doubtless felt a keen 
pang of indignation, and when he learned of the de- 
struction of his servants there was some sort of ap- 
preciation of the evil ; but when that last breathless 
messenger arrived, crying out that all his children 
had perished, there was no full appreciation of all it 
meant ; he bowed his head and worshipped. Later, 
as day by day he looked and they never came, the 
iron entered into his soul and wrung from him the 
bitter cry, " Let the day perish wherein I was born ! " 
No man could live but for that merciful law which 
hides from him the full meaning of his sorrow, and 
only lets in day by day a little more of its intensity as 
God knows he is able to bear it. 

13 



194 



THE SUFFICIENCY OF EVIL. 



It is this that Jesus is trying to teach us. Learn, 
he seems to say, — learn, not only that God sends 
the good things. This he does that you may learn to 
trust him. But also that he controls the evil. Do 
not loose yourself from that control, rather devote 
your energy to using it as God intends. I believe 
there is no one lesson more essential for us to learn. 
Until we learn it in part at least, there can be no 
marked spiritual progress. Of the life of each one 
of us is not this some sort of analysis ? 

There is the daily burden. It has its perplexities, 
its trials, its intermingling with others' lives. It is 
evident that it needs quiet, sweet temper, wise judg- 
ment, and above all great consideration for others. 
Even with all these essentials, few people are so con- 
stituted as to be able to do the daily tasks and bear 
the daily trials without a loss of what we call vitality. 
But how seldom we appreciate the seriousness of each 
day's life ; and so, instead of using all our energy to 
make the most of the present, we lose some of it by 
necessary friction, more in anticipating and trying to 
provide against coming trouble, until we become irri- 
table and overbearing, — and then what ? Some day 
some overwhelming calamity comes ; our strength 
has been wasted ; the anticipated problems have all 
been changed by this of which we never dreamed ; 
then with the new sorrow come new anticipations ; 
and the sickening remorse for all the trouble caused 



THE SUFFICIENCY OF EVIL. 195 



to others, for all the peace destroyed because the 
spirit chafed under the yoke of imaginary difficulties, 
for all the opportunities for sweet communion lost by 
means of the self-absorption in the past and future 
trials of life. Such a life cannot be long endured. 
No spiritual progress is possible till we learn to live 
each day alone, — till we rest in God's unfailing 
providence, — till we believe that no more than can 
be borne shall come any day, and that all God wants 
to teach us by evil is frustrated if we borrow more. 
Some men have no great breaches of the moral law 
lying heavy on their consciences ; but who has not 
some burden of a faithless waste of energy which has 
caused sorrow to those we love, and loss to our own 
soul's health? There is no way to rise from the 
shadow of that remorse except by the influence of 
that solemn teaching of Jesus : Each day has its 
own task, its own burden, its own sorrow, — it may 
be its own agony, — but it can be borne, it can be 
made to yield an exceeding weight of glory, if we do 
not add to it. No man is strong enough to bear what 
God lets come together with all that he can add. 

Opposed to this is the life of faith ; — the life that 
goes on each day, believing that nothing can by any 
means come to it which God's power cannot control ; 
asking itself less and less why things are as they are 
and more and more what ought to be done with them; 



196 



THE SUFFICIENCY OF EVIL. 



sure that something can be done because God is 
greater than all ; learning that the life of Jesus is 
what man was made for ; earnestly trying to use the 
awful experiences of life to develop the hidden life of 
the soul. 

Jesus gives us two precepts to help us in this work. 
The first is the consideration of nature. " Consider 
the lilies of the field, how they grow." The calm, un- 
ceasing, unconscious activity of nature, — think what 
stupendous results it produces. Yet there is no 
hurry, no anxiety, no striving after effect, — nothing 
but the simple appropriation of that which each day 
brings. The flowers which bare their bosom to the 
sun in June do not ask how they will be kept from 
freezing in December. The tree that loses its blos- 
soms in May does not force back the rising sap by 
fear of the awful blasts of winter. And what is the 
result? Night and day, summer and winter, seed- 
time and harvest, never fail. And what is more, it is 
only through that impotence of nature that man ex- 
ists upon this earth. Nature exists for the higher 
life, which has a power of which she knows noth- 
ing. Could Nature worry, could Nature change her 
spring to winter by anxiety, could she add to the 
frost that kills so many seeds earthquake and tem- 
pest, chaos would come, and no sentient life could 
exist upon this planet. She cannot, and that, says 
Jesus, is why the lilies grow in all their beauty, and 



THE SUFFICIENCY OF EVIL. 



197 



the sun rises, and the rain falls on the evil and on the 
good. Yet there is evil in nature. Famine and pes- 
tilence, storm and tempest, forest fires and mountain 
volcanoes, earthquake in the smiling plain, flood in 
the unsuspecting valley. Yet the world goes on, and 
is being created before our eyes for better life upon it. 
Consider it, says Jesus, consider it till you learn that 
it exists for a life higher than its own, by a power 
not its own, and that its life and stupendous work 
are possible only because it cannot frustrate the work 
of God. " It neither toils, nor spins, nor gathers 
into barns," but rests, and God clothes and feeds 
it. Consider nature, says Jesus, and learn that the 
secret of its power lies in its freedom from anxiety. 
Jesus was not the first to teach this, nor will he be 
the last; and had he had nothing more to say, the 
gain to the world would not have been great. Many 
men and women are coming to feel the profound 
truth lying in this thought, but by dwelling on it 
exclusively they have missed the Gospel, — the good 
news. How many are feeling to-day that the un- 
conscious life of nature is better than the fretful rest- 
lessness of man ! How many are saying, When the 
" fitful fever " we call life has run its course, we will 
drink deep of the anodyne called death, and sleep 
forever, undisturbed by care, untroubled by dreams. 
This was not Jesus's thought. The unconscious 
power of nature rested him, but the thought of the 



198 



THE SUFFICIENCY OF EVIL. 



destiny of man inspired him. The thought of evil 
which will not let man rest, the pricking goad 
which will not leave the flesh satisfied, the earth- 
quake which destroys the home built in such joy and 
love, the pestilence that turns the town into a char- 
nel-house, Jesus felt, were all working for a purpose, 
to teach men that they here can have no abiding 
city, and so teach them to seek one to come, by 
submitting their souls in trust to Him who knows 
what he does. Nature is blest because she uncon- 
sciously obeys. Man can be blest only by conscious 
obedience and loving trust. 

Nothing shows us the importance Jesus attaches to 
this more than the way in which he begs men to look 
at the other picture. Consider the lilies of the field, 
and the birds of the air. Consider their carelessness, 
and the marvellous results. Then turn to man. 
Note his fever, his anxiety, his weariness with the 
present, his regret for the past, his fear for the future. 
And how little is effected ! He cannot change the 
past, nor hold the present, nor see the future. What 
a pitiful object he is ! To nature an eccentricity, to 
philosophy a fool. But to God what? 0, to God 
a child, loved, longed for, waited for, cared for, 
pitied, as only a father can pity his own children. 
Pitied not because the evil is so great that he can- 
not bear it, but pitied because to the evil which is 
great enough, and has a purpose, he adds evil greater 



THE SUFFICIENCY OF EVIL. 199 



than he can endure, and which frustrates the awful, 
mysterious work of God. 

I have spoken of this principle as if it applied only 
to the individual on whom evil falls. But its appli- 
cation is very wide. We are not only to be on our 
guard against adding to our own burden through 
anxiety, but also to beware of saddening others' lives 
by complaining of our own lot. Their evil, too, is 
great enough ; let no man add to it. The Psalmist 
said, " When my heart is heavy, I will complain." 
He meant to God. St. Peter says, " Cast all your 
care upon God." 

See then the effect it might have upon our lives if 
we followed the Lord's teaching. We should give up 
the vain effort to understand the mystery of life. It 
is as impossible as to discern the windings of a narrow 
valley among the towering mountains. If we ever 
reach the mountain top, the way below will be plain 
before our eyes. 

We should endeavor to turn the events of each day 
to good account. We should be saying, " In what 
way can this experience be used so as to make me 
like Jesus Christ ? How can I live to-day so as to 
be the least burden to others ? " 

When that had been done, we could go still farther, 
and enter into sympathy with the silent majesty of 
nature, and regard it as the perpetual witness to eter- 



200 



THE SUFFICIENCY OF EVIL. 



nal power, and the strong example to feverish, fretful, 
anxious man. 

Would that be enough ? No. Man needs love, he 
needs a life which believes in him, and sacrifices 
itself for him, and holds before him an ideal the 
attainment of which is possible. for One with the 
majestic calm of nature and the loving heart of man ! 
That lias been the cry of many a soul. And many a 
soul has found the answer in Jesus Christ, — found 
him to be the perfectly satisfying manifestation of 
the mystery which, for want of a better name, we 
call God. And those souls have believed that every 
experience of life was an opportunity to come one 
step nearer God. May not we be like them? Jesus 
says, Yes ; only do not take the direction of your own 
life ; accept it as the birds do, as the lilies do. Then, 
when that has been done, turn to God as a son, and 
say, " For this cause came I unto this hour. Father, 
glorify thy name." 

Life is full of joy, life is full of sorrow. Thank 
God for all your joy, but beseech him to save you 
from adding to life's sorrow. 



XV. 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



The eternal God is thy refuge. 

Deuteronomy, xxxiii. 27. 



E are called together to-day by the Church to 



* * consider what we know of God. Let us ask 
ourselves, then, first of all, how it is that we learn, 
how we come by the knowledge of anything. The 
answer will very quickly be given, namely, by expe- 
rience ; and experience, we shall find, arises through 
the consciousness of want. 

For example, the child is conscious of some want, 
and through the avenue of the want the mother 
reveals herself to the child; and as the experiences 
of the child increase in number, and in intensity 
and depth, the knowledge of the mother by the child 
increases also. The new-born child needs warmth ; 
it is supplied. The new-born child needs food ; it is 
supplied. Clothing, air, speech, education through 
books, enlargement of the soul through companion- 
ship, the lifting up of a noble ideal through the reve- 
lation of an older, wiser, and better soul, — all these 
things follow in the education of the child's life. 




202 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



Now, we may call the end at which the child 
arrives the result of discovery or revelation. But if 
we stop to think about the matter for a moment, 
we shall see that experience is made up of these 
two things, — discovery and revelation ; in other 
words, that discovery and revelation are but two 
names for the same thing. If we look at it from 
the human or lower side, we call it discovery ; but if 
we look at it from the higher or divine side, we call 
it revelation ; because man can discover nothing that 
God does not reveal, and God can reveal to man 
nothing that man does not ultimately discover. 

Now, if this be so, let us ask ourselves, What is the 
end of experience ? In other words, Does experience 
end with simple sensation, or does it try to formulate 
itself into a given science ? If we do this, we shall 
find that the human mind is not satisfied to rest in 
experience without trying to gather together others 
of a like nature. The mind seeks to bring its knowl- 
edge under certain heads to which it can refer the 
larger knowledge it is continually receiving, and at 
last, if possible, to resolve all into a comprehensive 
and yet simple formula. That is the end and object 
of science ; and there has no experience come to 
humanity that humanity has not followed up by an 
attempt to formulate the law of its existence. 

So we gain and retain our knowledge. Experience 
is the reaper that mows down the grain, and reason is 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



203 



the binder who follows after, gathering into sheaves. 
Experience lays hold of some of the great facts of 
life and names them. Reason begins to gather up 
all these scattered names, and group them together 
under certain heads, until it finds what it calls the 
law of their association ; and when that has been 
done, when the flowers, for instance, with all their 
various names, have been gathered up into a few 
typical groups and named for those groups, then we 
have what we call the science of botany. 

I wish to apply these thoughts, which are very 
simple, and familiar doubtless to you all, to that 
which brings us here this morning, — the consider- 
ation of our knowledge of God. And I think we 
shall find that it follows the same law as that which 
our knowledge in any other department of life fol- 
lows ; namely, first, the name as the result of experi- 
ence ; and then, secondly, the formulation of those 
various names into given groups ; and, lastly, the 
setting forth of an authoritative formula, which is 
the science of God, or, as we more frequently call 
it, Theology. 

The question is not, as it is sometimes said, one 
of idle speculation, — what men have dreamed about 
God, — because no idle speculation could ever be 
subject to this law of human knowledge which works 
elsewhere. It is not idle speculation which has led 
men in different parts of the world, at different peri- 



204 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



ods of the world's history, with various character- 
istics, to unite in agreeing upon certain formulas 
which express man's knowledge of God. No, it is 
the result of experience. 

If you turn to the history of man, you will find 
that there are certain experiences which the human 
mind has undergone in its relation to nature. The 
record of the history of mankind begins with an im- 
pression made upon the mind of man by the presence 
of nature. Very often it is an experience of fear ; 
nature seems so great, and man so little. Some- 
times it is an experience of beauty ; nature is so full 
of glory that the heart of man rejoices in its pres- 
ence. Sometimes it is the thought of wisdom in the 
marvellous manifestation of the harmony and the 
apparent adjustment of nature to given ends, that has 
oppressed, or rejoiced, or astonished the heart of man, 
as the case may be. But underlying it all has been 
this thought, — that Nature was somehow the enemy 
of man, — -that though she seemed beautiful, though 
she seemed wise, still she was the oppressor of man, 
and that some day she that had brought him forth 
would devour him, and he should pass into the noth- 
ingness from which he came. And the heart of man 
grew sick and faint at the thought of the destroying 
power of nature. And so in every age and nation 
men have lifted themselves up above this overpower- 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



205 



ing sense of the glory, the strength, and the beauty 
of nature, and have claimed kinship with One who is 
above it all, who created it, who rules it, who knows 
the heart of men. 

They have given different names to this Life that 
was above men and beyond nature, — this Creator. 
If the experience took place in India, they called 
it Brahma. If it took place in Egypt, they called it 
Ptah. If in Greece, it was Olympian Jove. If in 
Rome, it was Jupiter. If in Judea, it was Jehovah. 
In all these names there was the thought of One 
nobler, greater, more powerful than nature, whom 
man could propitiate, to whom he could draw near, 
and so be delivered from the bondage of nature. 
" The eternal God," it was said in every age, " is 
thy refuge." 

Then came Jesus. And Jesus said : Call this power 
no longer by the ethnic national name of Brahma, 
Jehovah, Jove, or Jupiter, but call it by the human 
name, Father. Creator-Father, said Jesus, is the 
name to give to the Almighty Power that you have 
felt in the presence of nature, and to which you have 
desired to draw near, but to which you knew not 
how to draw near. Call it now what it is, your 
Father. And so there passed into human speech 
a new name for God, no longer the national name, 
but the catholic name, because answering to hu- 
man wants wherever found. Men who have heard 



206 



THE SOU US REFUGE. 



the Gospel have said from the time of Jesus, " God 
is our Father." 

Now, if that had been the only want that men had 
experienced, — namely, the longing for a Life greater 
than nature, for One who could rule and govern na- 
ture, and save them from its power, — there would 
never have been any further revelation of the name 
of God, because there would have been no want along 
the avenue of which man could have discovered God, 
or God could have revealed himself to man. But 
there were other wants. Man was not only in contact 
with nature, he was also in contact with his fellow 
men, and he found this society of which he formed 
a part filled with violence and sin, and the dream and 
hope of man's life was that One would appear who 
should be the King, who should rule men, who should 
make society something better than one tribe warring 
against another tribe ; should make it a nation in 
which order and decency, and all things that we now 
call civilization, could grow and flourish. So they 
set up men as kings, and called them the " sons of 
God," because they felt that no man could be a true 
king who was not in some sense the representative on 
earth of God. 

But there was another deeper thought as the indi- 
vidual became a power in life. As men became con- 
scious of their own personality as distinct from the 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



207 



personality of the tribe, or gens, or family, or 
nation of which they formed a part, there came into 
man's mind a desire for a King of his soul, — One 
who would rule not only in society and keep man 
from 'doing wrong to his fellow man, but who would 
rule also in his life, and prevent the conflict of which 
he was conscious between those two powers wrestling 
in his soul, one dragging him down to the beast level 
from which he had been raised, the other suggesting 
that he too belonged to God. The heart of man 
craved a King of the soul, that is, a Saviour. 

Then came Jesus, and he declared that he came to 
reveal the kingdom of God. He said the kingdom of 
God was within men. He said that he was the King, 
and that any man who came to him should find peace, 
because the filial spirit within man's soul would re- 
spond to the filial spirit that Jesus perfectly mani- 
fested, and so responding would assert itself in man's 
heart and rule there, and the kingdom of God should 
be set up in the soul of each individual man that 
drew near and swore allegiance to the King of human- 
ity. That was the promise of Jesus. He said that 
in the realization of that promise would come " the 
peace of God that passeth all understanding " ; that 
men's sins should be cast out ; that they should have 
the consciousness of pardon, and should know the 
calm that comes after the long struggle of battle. 
And the sinners flocked to Jesus in troops, not be- 



208 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



cause they had any theological theory about the for- 
giveness of sins, not because they had any theory 
about the scheme of salvation, but simply because 
they saw the beauty of holiness in the face of Jesus 
Christ, — simply because they were convinced that 
that character was the manifestation of the Divine 
Life that they had thought or heard of from time to 
time, but had now for the first time seen revealed. 

Jesus called himself the Son of man, the typical 
man, the man that reveals to humanity what mankind 
is ; and he called himself also the Son of God, the 
One who reveals to humanity what God is : " He that 
hath seen me hath seen the Father also." 

Now, after this preaching of Jesus, there was no 
particular theory on which the disciples were agreed 
as to his relation to the Father. Simply the word 
God had enlarged, for them, its meaning. They could 
no longer think of the Father without thinking of 
Jesus. They could not think of Jesus without think- 
ing of the Father. Somehow they felt towards them 
both alike. They did not analyze their feelings, but 
they knew that in some way Christ had become as 
God to them. The heaven was not empty, the Eter- 
nal had not left his throne when Jesus was born. No 
such thought as that ever entered their minds. They 
did not know how Jesus was related to the Father, 
only they felt that he was to them what God was to 
them. If they thought of the Father, they thought 



THE SOUVS REFUGE. 



209 



of Jesus ; if they thought of Jesus, they thought of 
the Father. 

It was something like the experience that goes on 
in the hearts of men to-day. A man looks into the 
face of his wife and says, You have all my love. And 
some day a child is born. He does not transfer the 
love of his wife to his child, he is not conscious of any 
change. He is only conscious that his heart has gone 
forth as fully to the child as it went to the mother. 
He has simply enlarged his conception of family. 
Where his whole love was given forth to one, his 
whole life-love is now given forth to another. The 
number of objects of his love has increased, his love 
has increased with it. 

It was the same way, my friends, with the disciples. 
It was not that they had more gods than they had 
before ; it was simply that the power of their devo- 
tion Godward had been increased by the revelation 
of Jesus Christ, so that they were able to give forth 
the love to Jesus and to the Father that they had 
heretofore given forth to the Father alone. 

I suppose that represents the experience of the 
Church for thirty years after the ascension of Jesus 
Christ. 

There was also a third experience that was going 
on in the hearts of men, to which we must now refer, 
and that was a suspicion that they were themselves in 

14 



210 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



some way allied to God, a suspicion that Jesus did 
himself confirm, for in revealing to them himself as 
the Son of God, he revealed them to themselves as 
the children of God. He declared that all men were 
the children of God, — in other words, that all men 
were a part of the Divine life. And the question in- 
stantly arose through that experience, What relation 
then does God bear to the individual, and in what 
sense is the individual a part of God ? We have come 
to learn, men might have said, that the name of God 
means far more than we used to think it meant. We 
have come to learn that it means the Father of our 
souls, in whom we find peace. We have come to learn 
that it means the Perfect Man, Christ Jesus, who has 
saved us from our sins. Does it mean more than this ? 
If not, then this is the position we are in. Mankind 
is far away from God, and therefore we must, by some 
power of our own, single ourselves out from the com- 
mon humanity to which we belong, and draw near to 
Jesus Christ. Is this the meaning of life ? Jesus 
told them it was not the meaning of life, that when 
he had gone away from them, when he had with- 
drawn his physical presence from them, God would 
be nearer to them than he had ever been before, 
which they found fulfilled after the ascension. 

Whatever the story may mean of the descent of 
the Spirit, these men felt, as they never had felt be- 
fore, their love for God, their nearness to Jesus ; they 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



211 



could think of nothing else, and in them awoke a 
belief that they were but a spark of that Life which 
had been perfected and revealed in Jesus, and that 
God was somehow dwelling in them to flame that 
spark, that it might become united, and yet not be 
absorbed in the Eternal Life which had created all 
things, and had been revealed in Jesus Christ. 

So men found that their thought of God had en- 
larged again. It meant the Creator ; it meant the 
Saviour ; it meant the Spirit that spoke to them 
through conscience, and revealed to them duty, that 
lifted up before them the glory of hope, that was be- 
side them in the hour of despondency, that cheered 
them on to the battle, when the voices of the senses 
seemed with their clamor to drown the still, small 
voice of God. 

Now, my friends, these experiences are just as real 
as walking upon the earth, or gazing upon the stars, 
or taking hold of the hand of our fellow men. They 
are experiences of which some men have been more 
vividly conscious than others, but of which all men 
have in some sort known the meaning. 

Now, then, that being so, is it possible to have a 
science of this ? Is it possible to draw these varied 
experiences together and give to them a name ? If so, 
we have the science of the experience by man of God. 
It is exactly that which the Church undertook to do. 



212 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



She did not do it at once. There is almost none of it 
in the Synoptic Gospels, though when you have once 
got the key you find it there. There is very little of 
it until perhaps thirty years after the ascension of 
Christ. And if you know your New Testament, — not 
as a Koran, in which every word has an equal. value, 
but as the literature of the Church, — if you know 
when these different documents that form our New 
Testament were written, you can trace, to use a 
modern scientific term, the evolution of this formula 
just as clearly as you can trace the evolution of any 
physical science through the literature of the scien- 
tific age which preceded it. 

In the Epistles to the Colossians and to the Philip- 
pians St. Paul begins to try to formulate the mean- 
ing of the relation of Jesus Christ to the Father, and 
it goes on until we come to the Gospel of St. John, 
where the life revealed in Jesus Christ is identified 
with the Eternal Logos, the Reason of God, the 
human side of God, that was not made when Jesus 
was made, but existed from all eternity ; for there 
never was a time when God did not have within him 
the potentiality of humanity, and that potentiality be- 
came actual in Jesus Christ. This was denied, not 
because it was in conflict with reason, but because 
it was in conflict with Oriental theories of matter 
and spirit. 

And so one writer after another tried to formulate 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



213 



the science of the relation of man to God; and it 
was not completed until the Council of Nicsea in the 
year 325, when was put forth the creed, afterwards 
modified by the Council of Constantinople, which 
the Church directs us to use, especially on Trinity 
Sunday. An attempt was made then to formulate 
the experience of a human soul in contact with God. 
This was put forth with authority ; it was accepted 
with authority, too, — the authority of reason. 1 But 
neither in the creed of Nicaea, nor in the so called 
Apostle's Creed, nor in the Bible, is there one word 
about three persons and one God, or one person and 
three Gods. That was a later addition ; and I ven- 
ture to say that the whole difficulty that arises in the 
minds of thoughtful people about the doctrine of the 
Trinity, and that which gives a handle to the vain 
scoffers who speak about that which has been the 
very refuge of the human soul in all these Christian 
ages as if it were a contradiction that any child who 
knew how to subtract and add could rectify, — I ven- 
ture to say that all these difficulties have resulted 
from the introduction of certain philosophical terms 
which have no place here. 

The last addition in the attempt to formulate the 
Christian science of the relation of man to God is 
found in the First Epistle of St. John, where we 

1 " Servatur ubique Jus Romanum non ratione imperii sed ratio- 
nis imperio." Laferriere, quoted in Lowell's "Ere of the French 
Revolution." 



214 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



read : " There are three that bear record in heaven, 
the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost ; and these 
three are one." That is no part of the Bible. It 
never was written by St. John. It was not written 
until after the Nicaean Council. It was put into the 
Bible as the expression of the Church's belief in 
regard to God. I believe it to be true ; but it is no 
part of the Bible, and it confuses and troubles us 
when we find the last term of the evolution intro- 
duced at the very beginning of the process. 

There are two theories in regard to the being of 
God. No man is prepared to say which of them is 
the more nearly correct. The word " person " is 
used now in a very different sense from that in 
which it was used when the creed was formulated, — 
so different as almost to be a contradiction in terms. 
The word "person" now means to the ordinary mind 
an individual, such as John, James, Peter ; but it 
meant nothing of the sort originally. It comes, as 
you know, from the Latin persona, and means a 
44 mask," a "face," which is a manifestation of some 
particular phase of the life. What was said was that 
in the Divine Life there are these three faces, Father, 
Son, and Holy Ghost ; and that these three are one 
God. 

It is practical, this faith, because it is the result 
of experience ; and if it were not that it would have 
no meaning for us. 



THE SOU US REFUGE. 



215 



" The eternal God is thy refuge." There is but 
one God ; the human soul need not seek first one, 
and then another, and then a third, in order to pro- 
pitiate in some way one who is opposed to the others. 
Not that, — there is but one God in whom the human 
soul may find rest. 

But the experiences of the human soul may be 
summed up in these three : the want of a Creator, 
who is with man as against the apparent enmity of 
nature, and to that One we draw near, and behold, 
God has to us the face of the Father. And the 
Creed says that the peace that comes into your soul 
when you identify yourself with the Father-Creator 
is the peace of God ; because that Father is God, 
you have identified yourself with God. 

In the hour of sin, in the discord of life, when we 
begin to doubt God's love, when we long' for One to 
whom we can draw near and confess our sin, as we 
can confess it only to One who has entered into our 
experience and known temptation, who has borne 
sorrow and yet loved and trusted God through all, — 
when we draw near to that One we see the face of 
Jesus Christ, the Eternal Son, and the Creed says, It 
is God. You have drawn near to God. God, whom 
you knew a minute ago as your Creator, you now 
know as your Saviour. 

Sin rises up within me and says, Why try to live 
the ideal life ? Why not give up and turn from 



216 



THE SOUL'S REFUGE. 



sacrifice to self? Why not eat and drink, for to- 
morrow we die ? Why not seek the prizes of life, 
instead of being a servant ? And the Spirit says 
within me, " The eternal God is thy refuge." You 
are part of Jesus Christ because of the oneness of 
your nature with his ; you are part of the Eternal 
God, and can draw near to the Father as a son. 
The glory, the beauty, the splendor of your life is 
found in God. And the Creed says : That is the 
voice of God; you have seen a new face of God, — 
the face of God that is within your poor, troubled, 
sinful soul, shining more and more unto the per- 
fect day. 

That is the Creed. One God, — Father, Son, and 
Holy Spirit, — Creator, Saviour, Sanctifier. That is 
the formula of the experience of humanity thus far 
in the conflict against sin, and in the attempt to 
realize itself in God. It is no vain dream of philos- 
ophers. It is no contradiction of schoolboys. It is 
that which saints on earth and the redeemed above 
have found to be the refuge of the human soul. 



XVI. 



THE ARROW OF THE LORD'S DELIVERANCE. 

Now Elisha teas fallen sick of his sickness whereof he 
died. And Jo ash the king of Israel came down unto him, 
and wept over his face, and said, my father, my father, 
the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof. And 
Elisha said unto him, Take boiv and arrows. And he 
took unto him boiv and arrows. And he said to the king 
of Israel, Put thine hand upon the bow. And he put his 
hand upon it : and Elisha put his hands upon the king's 
hands. And, he said, Open the windoiv eastward. And 
he opened it. Then Elisha said, Shoot. And he shot. 
And he said, The arrow of the Lord's deliverance, and 
the arrow of deliverance from Syria : for thou shalt 
smite the Syrians in Aphek, till thou have consumed 
them. And he said, Take the arrows. And he took 
them. And he said unto the king of Israel, Smite upon 
the ground. And he smote thrice, and stayed. And the 
man of God ivas ivroth ivith him, and said, Thou should- 
est have smitten five or six times ; then hadst thou smitten 
Syria till thou hadst consumed it: whereas now thou 
shalt smite Syria but thrice. — 2 Kings, xiii. 14-19. 

/ T" V HIS is the last scene in the historical drama 
of Elisha ; the words which precede this pas- 
sage give us very briefly the history of Joash the 



218 



THE ARROW OF 



king. We learn from this and from other parts of 
the Bible that this king was a brave general and an 
able ruler, but that his life was a failure. He wasted 
his energies in fighting against Judah, and simply 
held the Syrians at bay on the eastern frontier of 
Israel. And so, after we are told in this book of the 
burial of Joash, we have this story put in, which takes 
us back to the beginning of the reign of the young 
king, and we see him in all the freshness and vigor of 
his youth. He hears that Elisha, the man of God, is 
fallen sick of his sickness whereof he died; and with a 
generous impulse the king leaves his palace and goes 
down to the house of the prophet, and enters into 
his bedchamber. And when he sees the great prophet 
stretched helpless on the bed from which he should 
never rise to walk again, there seems to have flooded 
his soul the memory of all this one man had done, — 
how he had been at once poet and counsellor and 
statesman and leader. He thought of the reign that 
was opening before him ; he thought of his own help- 
lessness ; and, in the words that Elisha had used 
when Elijah was rapt away from his sight, he cried : 
" my father, my father, thou art the chariot of 
Israel, and the horsemen thereof." 

The old prophet roused himself and looked into 
the face of the young king ; and perhaps there came 
into his heart the hope that now, at last, a worthy 
son of David was come to reign, and he tries him. 



THE LORD'S DELIVERANCE. 



219 



He tells him to take the bow and arrows, which he 
does ; and the prophet, lifting himself up, lays his 
feeble hand on the strong hand of the young king, 
and through the open window that looked eastward 
toward their great enemy, Syria and Damascus, he 
tells the king to shoot the arrow, which he does. 
And then the prophet, full of divine enthusiasm, 
calls out, " It is the arrow of the Lord's deliver- 
ance ! " and says to the king, " Take the arrows, 
take all of them, smite upon the ground." And the 
king takes them, and smites three times, and stays. 

The prophet falls back. if thou hadst smitten 
five or six times, if thou hadst been filled with a 
divine enthusiasm for God's work, Syria should have 
been destroyed ! Now, you shall go down into your 
grave with only half the victory won. That was the 
secret of the failure of Joash, king of Israel. 

How the spiritual drama repeats itself year after 
year ! Again and again we see young people come 
up full of enthusiasm, full of the memory of the 
great things that noble lives have done, lamenting 
the glory that has departed from the earth, feeling 
a sudden impulse, which like an arrow is shot forth 
from the soul, essaying to do some great and noble 
work ; and in that moment the prophetic voice is 
heard saying, The arrow of the Lord's deliverance ; 
there lies the work of your life. This sudden im- 



220 



THE ARROW OF 



pulse that takes possession of you in your youth, and 
causes you to shoot forth the arrows of the aspira- 
tions of your soul, — these are the things, my friends, 
that show you the way of the Lord. It is God's pur- 
pose that you should be the deliverer of his people in 
the particular path that he has opened before you. 

How that is going on every day ! How every day 
at college men are lifting up their hearts, and set- 
ting open the windows of their souls, and looking out, 
shooting forth the thoughts and hopes and desires of 
their soul into this great unknown world ! And the 
prophetic voice says to them, This way, in the path 
of sober judgment, in the path of splendid manage- 
ment, in the path of noble eloquence, in the path of 
self-denial for the service of man, there is the arrow 
of the Lord's deliverance ; there is the path that is 
opening out before you for a noble, splendid, self- 
denying, useful, effective life. 

How many have heard that ! How many are hear- 
ing it this very Sunday morning, sitting in the silence 
of their own chambers, and dreaming of the mystery, 
and the splendor, and the opportunity of life ! 

And then what? Then says the prophetic voice 
again, Smite upon the ground. Take these arrows 
and bind them together, and in a divine frenzy de- 
vote yourself, soul and body, to the work that God 
has revealed to you to do. Then comes the critical 
moment in a man's life. He smites thrice, and 



THE LORD'S DELIVERANCE. 



221 



stays. He says to himself, I need not do my best ; 
I can do about as well as other men and not be 
wearied by my work ; I have gifts that will enable 
me to live, and enable me to attain, perchance, a for- 
tune, and yet I need not give up the things that make 
life pleasant; I need not turn aside from my self- 
indulgence ; I will smite thrice, and stay. 

So it comes to pass that this great multitude, 
surging out into the life of the world year after 
year, equipped, crowned as kings for the work of 
life, smite the Syrians but thrice. The work of life 
is but half done. They remain failures, when they 
might have triumphed gloriously. 

Or take another illustration of the same thing. 
Here is a woman who has given herself up to a life 
of frivolity and vanity. Perhaps she is not to blame 
for that ; perhaps she has had no ideal of noble 
things set before her. But some day the casement 
is thrown open, and she sees a new life before her, — 
a life which shall be devoted to husband and chil- 
dren and home, a life which shall for the first time 
remember the great forgotten who dwell among us. 
The hand of the prophet is on that woman, and her 
soul shoots forth the arrow of a new desire. And 
the voice says, It is the arrow of the Lord's deliver- 
ance ; there lie the glory, and splendor, and nobility 
of your life ; there is the path on which God would 
have you walk, and you may deliver yourself and 



222 



THE ARROW OF 



deliver those who live about you from the slavery and 
misery of the false ideals that thus far have domi- 
nated them. Smite, says the voice of the prophet. 
Devote yourself, soul and body, instantly, to the new 
work that has been revealed to you. 

And she smites thrice. She goes to see some poor 
stricken soul, and she finds it tiresome ; she turns 
aside from some gathering of frivolity, and her soul 
is parched. She undertakes some noble work of self- 
denial, and she is tired. She smites thrice, and stays, 
and goes down with the great multitude, worthless, 
useless, bringing no fruit to perfection. 

Listen to one more example of the same thing. 
Here is a man or woman who has come on through 
life, and suddenly awakes to the consciousness of his 
ignorance of the Divine revelation in Jesus Christ. 
It smites upon him. Sometimes for one cause, and 
sometimes for another, it comes to pass that men 
and women living here in this city suddenly for the 
first time have a revelation of the glory and beauty 
and power of the life of Jesus Christ. And they say 
to themselves, Is the thing a myth ? How has it come 
to pass that people have dreamed of such a life ? How 
is it that men and women gather week after week, and 
day after day, to hear of the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
desire to serve him? 

That man shoots forth the arrow of his desire for 
knowledge, and the voice says, It is the arrow of the 



THE LORD'S DELIVERANCE. 



223 



Lord's deliverance. There lies the path by which 
you shall walk into the kingdom of truth and be 
saved from your enemies. And he begins to read. 
He reads a little, and he talks a little, and he thinks 
a little. But he learns before long that there is 
opening up before him a great and tremendous work, 
and the scepticism of the time finds voice, and whis- 
pers, Why waste your energies to learn that which 
cannot be known ? Devote the energy of life to 
something that is practical ; turn aside from vain 
dreams. 

So he, like the others, smites thrice and stays, 
and enters the great company of sceptics, — or, as 
they like to be called to-day, agnostics, — ignorant 
of God's eternal truth. 

The fact is familiar to us all ; but what I would 
like to do in the few moments that are left this 
morning is to ask you to consider with me whether 
there be not some explanation of this constant fail- 
ure in life, in a life which began with a noble im- 
pulse, in a life which heard the inspiring voice of God 
speaking through the prophet, — if there be not some 
explanation of that failure that perhaps will point 
the way to better things. 

I cannot but think, my friends, that it is largely 
due to a false conception of our own value and our 
own work in this world. I cannot but think that 



224 



THE ARROW OF 



these constant failures are due largely to a feeling 
that it is a matter of personal concern alone. In 
other words, that it is nobody's business but my own 
whether or not I make the most of the gifts that 
have been bestowed upon me ; that it does not con- 
cern any one except myself whether my life be a 
frivolous or a helpful one ; that religion is a thing 
between the individual soul and Almighty God, and 
that it is a matter of no consequence to any one 
except myself whether I know and acknowledge 
Jesus Christ as my King and Master, or whether I 
drift on and say I don't know. 

Now Elisha, the old prophet, and all who with him 
have been filled with the prophetic spirit, have felt 
that here lay the fallacy of life. It was not a thing that 
concerned Joash alone whether or not he smote upon 
the ground five or six times. It was not a thing that 
concerned him alone, or concerns you and me alone, 
whether we devote ourselves soul and body, in the 
power of a divine enthusiasm, to a nobler, more glo- 
rious and splendid life, that by the mercy of God has 
been revealed to us. It concerns God. It concerns 
the kingdom of Israel, by whatever name it may be 
known, — whether it be the little coterie of friends 
that surrounds you, or whether it be the city of 
Boston, or the great Commonwealth, or the nation 
of which we form a part. All are concerned, because 
the aspiration of your soul, the desire of your soul, 



THE LORD'S DELIVERANCE. 225 



the shooting forth of any aspiration for a nobler and 
a better life, is the arrow of the Lord's deliverance. 

It is Almighty God that has chosen you to do this 
particular work, to shoot the arrow of deliverance 
through that particular casement, and to have as an 
object that particular wickedness which is oppress- 
ing his people. It is not a thing that concerns me 
and you alone whether or not we save our own souls. 
It does concern us, but that is not the whole of the 
truth. The whole of the truth is that Almighty God 
has chosen every one of you here, merchant, law- 
yer, physician, woman of the world, woman of soci- 
ety, — all, men, women, and children alike, — each 
one of them has been chosen by God ; and the way 
is revealed by the shooting forth of your nature to 
overcome the special evil that God Almighty knew 
that you were capable of overcoming. 

And we feel it, too. When the Divine enthusiasm 
takes possession of us, we feel ourselves equal to 
this work. And the reason we fail is that we forget 
that it is actually God that has called us, and that 
this deliverance is nothing less than the deliverance 
appointed by Jehovah. 

Now, suppose any man or woman had that thought 
take possession of his soul. Do you not think, my 
friends, that life would be different from what it is ? 
Suppose it came to any man in this church this 

15 



226 



THE ARROW OF 



morning, that the condition of affairs in which we 
are now living, in our business life, was nothing less 
than slavery. Suppose it was revealed to him that 
he* was the one chosen by God to do a great work 
in this community, in changing the ideal that has 
taken possession of people and enslaved them, that 
the end and object of life is luxury. Do you sup- 
pose, my friends, if this work had been done twenty 
years ago, there would be so many weary men this 
day saying to themselves, What shall the morrow 
bring forth ? Men dropping dead because they can- 
not stand the strain. Men killing themselves be- 
cause at last the main object that they have in life 
is removed from their eyes. 

It is the life not of men : I do not say, not of 
children of God, — I say, not of men. It is the grasp- 
ing, struggling, awful life of the beasts of the field. 
This love of gold, this thirst for riches, this heart- 
rending desire for luxury, — it has taken possession 
of us all ; and therefore we have such days of awful 
care and such nights of fruitless pain. 

Is there no man to whom better things are re- 
vealed ? To that man there has been shown the 
arrow of the Lord's deliverance. 

Is there no woman to whom a better vision has 
appeared of what our social life might be ? What is 
it now ? I will not undertake to characterize it. 
I would not undertake to describe it, for it is impos- 



THE LORD'S DELIVERANCE. 



227 



sible. I speak, indeed, only of those things which 
are the worst amongst us. Of course there is good, 
there is sweetness and light. But is not something 
altogether wrong when it is possible for a woman call- 
ing herself a Christian, kneeling at the table of the 
Lord, and saying that she desires to feed on the body 
and blood of Jesus Christ, and will live his life, — is 
there not something wrong when that woman can 
seek out her bosom friend and say, as the moth 
might say, I sailed so near the candle that my sides 
were hot, and yet I was not singed ? I have come so 
near to sin that there was almost scandal, yet I am 
still received ? 

The arrow of the Lord's deliverance ! Who is the 
woman that will shoot it forth and change the things 
that are ? 

The arrow of the Lord's deliverance ! Is there 
not need of it in our religious life ? Is there not 
need that we should see that the real work of life is 
not the crying with our lips of " Lord, Lord," but the 
earnest doing of the will of our Father in heaven ? 
Is there no man whose soul can open and see the 
enemy that besets the Church, and, feeling the 
divine influence shoot out the impulse of his life 
against it, devoting himself to the redemption of 
Israel ? 

Ah, if it were done ! If that one thought of which 
I have been speaking, which I find wrapped up in 



228 



THE ARROW OF 



this old story of the King Joash and the Prophet 
Elisha, could take possession of this congregation 
this morning, the world would be a different thing. 

How do I know ? Because, as I look back over 
history and note what life has been, — when, as 
Browning says, 

" I look to the end of work, contrast 
The petty done with the undone vast, 
This our present with our hopeful past," — 

I know that I have failed. But I know I need not 
have failed ; I know that God has never inspired 
a man to do a work which he did not give him the 
power to accomplish. Yet in all history there has 
been but One who, shooting out the arrow of his 
soul, smote upon the ground with all the energy of 
his being and delivered Israel. 

There was another, a young man too, on whom the 
hand of the prophet was laid, and he went up into 
the wilderness and climbed the mountain, and shot 
forth the full expression of his life, and he saw the 
arrow fall, and it fell on Calvary. And he heard 
the voice, It is the arrow of the Lord's deliverance. 
And he said, Lo, I come to do thy will, God. 
And by that you and I are saved. 

The arrow of the Lord's deliverance. I have tried 
to illustrate it in this way and that, by referring to 
the different experiences and energies of our nature. 



THE LORD'S DELIVERANCE. 



229 



Gather it up in one final word, The arrow of the 
Lord's deliverance is human life. Each soul that 
comes into this world is shot forth by the Divine 
impulse, and passes through darkness and sorrow, 
and sickness and weariness and pain ; but it speeds 
on its way, and may reach that which God aimed it 
at if it hear through all the journey and through all 
the mystery, Thou art the arrow of the Lord's deliv- 
erance. You were born that some work might be 
done, some evil overcome, that no other soul in all 
time could do. 

And if, my friends, we and our children fail to 
co-operate with God, the work of God fails. But if 
we lift up our hearts and thank Him, not oppressed 
by the burden and responsibility, but glorified, in- 
spired, and ennobled by the remembrance of what it 
means to be the arrow of the Lord's deliverance, 
then life will be strong and brave, and full of glory 
and full of joy. 

May God save you, save us, from failure. May 
God enable us, when the Divine voice speaks, to give 
ourselves, soul and body, to His glorious work ! 



XVII. 



THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 



Ye look at the things that are before your face. 

2 Corinthians, x. 7. 



T. PAUL was speaking of the failure of the Co- 



^ rinthians to appreciate what he had been to them, 
and tells them that this failure was due to their habit 
of seeing only the things that were before their face. 
When they looked on him, they saw what some one 
has coarsely but truly called a blear-eyed little Jew ; 
they failed to see a soul which had been made noble 
and beautiful by communion with its Lord. 

The fact itself is a very common one ; the failure 
of the short-sighted men, who judge according to the 
outward appearance, to recognize the prince in dis- 
guise, has long been a favorite subject with the sat- 
irist ; and if it only led to the confusion which is 
sure to follow when the prince reveals himself, one 
might laugh again, as we used to do at the discom- 
fiture of those who in the fairy tales failed to see 
what we saw. 

But indeed this failure is no subject for the pen 




THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 



231 



of the satirist, it is no comedy, when it enters into 
the deeper concerns of life, — it is a tragedy. I ask 
you to consider with ine, then, some examples of the 
poiver of the obvious on the lives of men. 

First, in what it does in the matter of self- 
indulgence. 

When the results of physical indulgence are ob- 
vious, it needs no orator to make men tremble in 
speaking of temperance and judgment to come. It 
is so evident to the poor wretch trembling on the 
brink of paralysis, or scared by imaginary dangers, 
that he must stop in his downward career, that it is 
easy to get from him a maudlin promise of a new 
life. He sees the things which are before his face. 

But what are we to say to another man who is 
self-indulgent ? 

We may warn him of the consequences which must 
follow from sowing to the flesh ; but the only conse- 
quences he regards are physical, and they do not 
seem alarming. There are men who are temperate 
in their intemperance. They do not get drunk ; they 
only stimulate a little. That is, they draw every day 
upon their capital. Were we to tell them so, they 
would smile good-naturedly, and say, " Better to burn 
out than to rust out." Why should I wish to live 
to be eighty, — " sans eyes, sans teeth, sans every- 
thing " ? I harm no one ; I am as well as most men ; 



232 THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 

1 am an indulgent father and a thoughtful husband. 
Suppose my voice is a little thick as I walk home 
before dinner, who is the worse for it ? Am I not 
polite to those I meet ? What do you wish ? Iam 
warm and comfortable, and fall of kindly thoughts. 
I took a nip at the bar, or a cocktail at the club, — 
well, what of it ? 

What shall we say to them ? What Paul said to 
the Corinthians : " Ye look at the things that are 
before your face." You are sleek and comfortable, 
sound and kind perhaps, as we say of a horse. If what 
is seen is all there is to you, you may be right, and 
those who dream of the spirit may be mad. While 
we look at the things that are before the face, there 
is nothing to be said of these men. They shall not 
lie in a drunkard's grave ; they are strong and well. 
Bat — and here is the tragedy — they have their re- 
ward ! This is all they can expect. There is no eter- 
nity for the physical man, there is no progress. They 
catch no glimpse of what life might be. They believe 
that a voice was heard on Jordan saying, " Thou art 
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased " ; but 
they never dream that that same approving voice can 
be heard under the Common trees, or in the Garden 
walks, or on the streets that lead them home. 

my friend, while you look at the things that 
are before your face, I cannot help you, — you have 
the best of the argument. Easy good nature, a daily 



THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 233 



increase of the animal life, the dulling of the ear 
and eye, — that is what comes from feeding the 
appetite on what is before the face. Why is it 
sad ? It is because the animal life is but the 
shadow of that true life which even now these 
men of whom I speak might know, — a life of 
progress, which can no more be content to walk 
forever on the same low level than the lark can be 
content to plod on the dusty road when the open 
sky calls it to sail among the island clouds and be 
inspired by its purer air, — a life that turns with 
disgust from satisfaction, and prays to be filled with 
humility in the presence of wisdom and love such as 
God's, — a life crowned with the exaltation which 
comes with the knowledge that it is the instrument 
of God's will. To see this, or any part of this, is to 
be saved from that degradation of animalism which 
comes to those who look only on what is before their 
face. 

Such illustrations of the power of the obvious are 
not rare, but there is another more common still. 
I mean the rich man. He too looks on the things 
which are before his face. He sees his neighbors 
vying with one another in the carnival of luxury. It 
seems the natural thing to do. He has an abun- 
dance of means, he adapts himself to the feeling of 
the moment, he lives as his neighbors live. He is 



234 



THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 



not conscious of any wrong-doing. He is indignant 
when he reads of the violence of the anarchist or the 
ravings of the demagogue. He knows that his in- 
come only suffices comfortably to supply what his 
neighbors have. He gives in charity, — but after all 
it is grudgingly or of necessity, — because he shrinks 
from comment, rather than because his soul leaps up 
to greet an opportunity of doing good. So the years 
roll by. Death squeezes some tears from him. Mar- 
riage and birth bring a smile. He is well dressed, 
polite, well fed. He may have an eye for color and 
think he loves art, or a sensitive ear and think he 
enjoys music ; but poetry has no message for him. 
He asks Science to pat his sleek body, not to touch 
with her electric finger his imagination and free him 
from his prison-house, and show him the unseen uni- 
verse. He looks on the things which are before his 
face, and never sees the luxury of doing good, never 
knows the robust thrill of a useful life. Yet what 
might he not be and do ? With money that gives 
him leisure to learn the true condition of the poor, 
with the education that has fitted him to be a guide, 
with the inherited refinement that could purify, such 
a man might know the joy, the power, the glory of 
life ; and he misses it all, sells, for what he can taste 
and wear and touch, his birthright of happiness and 
influence. the pity of it ! The poor rich ! The 
cultivated ignorant ! The sad merry-makers ! Paul 



THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 



235 



wrote of himself, " Having nothing, and yet possess- 
ing all things." The epitaph of the idle rich should 
be, " Having all things, and yet possessing nothing." 
For a man possesses only that over which he has 
power, and which he can make the servant of his 
higher nature. In that sense, how many can be said 
to possess either learning or wealth ? Here is a man 
well educated, as we say ; he stands in the club win- 
dow with the man he calls his friend, whom he thinks 
he knows. Some day the crisis of his life comes to 
his friend, some great temptation assails him, some 
great agony wrings his soul. The things which he 
neither believed nor disbelieved now stand before him 
and insist that he shall pass judgment on them : Is 
there a God ? Is there life after death ? Is there 
more of man than is before his face ? Will he ask 
you to help him then ? Could you help him if he 
did ? Yet that is the test of friendship. These 
men and women whom we think we know are spirit- 
ual beings. They have their times of hope and fear. 
Can they tell them to you ? Yet they long to tell 
you. How their yearning eyes look into yours to 
search for some gleam of the life of the spirit ! And 
if they find it, the hard man will weep, and the cyn- 
ical man will thank you for love, and the sinner will 
take hope, and the dying will put their trust in God. 
Can they find God in you ? If not, what has it 
profited to have gained the whole world ? You have 



236 THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 



lost your soul, your true self, and you have become 
such a thing as fashion makes instead of a son of 
man. I do not ask what shall become of such men, 
I ask what are they now ; and I hear the words of 
Christ : " This is condemnation, that light is come 
into the world, and men loved darkness rather than 
light because their deeds were evil." The deeds of 
the idle rich are evil because they are selfish. And 
yet they might be so different. The opportunities are 
so many and so near ; the reward of joy and a sense 
of power is so immediate. Is there not here some 
wasted life that by a supreme act of self-denial — 
shall I not better say, of self-assertion ? — will close 
his eyes to the things that are before his face, — the 
routine of custom, the tyranny of fashion, the sense- 
less display of luxury, — and then open them again 
to the life of usefulness, and joy, and power, which 
is the unseen reality ? 

T have been speaking of the more evident illus- 
trations of the obvious, but there are many more. 
For example, two men are talking together of that 
question compared with which all other questions 
are as nothing. I mean the being of God. One of 
them says, I do not believe in God, because there is 
no proof of his existence. The sun rises and sets, 
the seasons come and go, the sun waxes hot and 
the fruits ripen, the winter blows and nature sleeps. 



THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 237 



It has always been so. There is no need of External 
Power. What shall his friend say ? How can he 
prove the existence of that which is the one certainty 
to him ? He can no more prove it to the man who 
looks only at the things which are before his face, 
than he can prove the reality of the atmosphere to 
the man who holds his breath and yet insists that he 
be shown the impalpable air. How deep this runs ! 
A man says, If by God you mean some tendency to 
righteousness in the universe, that I believe in ; but 
when you speak of the person of God, my soul rebels. 
What is personality ? It is limitation. I see per- 
sons all around me ; I believe them to be influenced 
by the strongest motive. I see that what we call 
free will and choice are the manifestations of con- 
flict. What is free will but the victory after struggle 
with opposing force ? What is love but the mastery 
of the life by some other life ? The very essentials 
of personality are limitations. What an example of 
seeing what is before the face ! The whole argument 
is the result of making the limitations of humanity 
the measure of life, instead of looking to the reality 
which these limitations cannot hold, saying, Human 
personality is not the measure of the Divine Personal- 
ity, but only the shadow of it. With all its inevitable 
limitations, the essentials of personality, free determi- 
nation, and love are the doorway by which the soul 
passes into that larger life which is about it, and 



238 THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 



feels that it is realizing itself. To deny Divine Per- 
sonality because human individuality, its type, is such 
a feeble thing, is like denying the sweep and power 
of the ocean because the little inlet of our shore is 
limited by the headlands which we see. 

What difference does it make ? some man may 
say. Why, this : if there be no Being self-poised in 
the perpetual ebb and flow of universal life, if there be 
no love which needs my love as the sea needs the drops 
of rain, — not because the rain is alien to the sea, 
but just because it is a part of it, — if, I say, there be 
no love to which the soul of man can turn, then there 
can be no communion. Well, if there be no commun- 
ion, my life is like a sheet of water cut off from the 
great source of purification, — an inland sea. Which 
of us can claim even that for himself ? Are we not 
rather little ponds that dot the surface of the land- 
scape, slowly but surely drying up ? It is not a mat- 
ter of indifference whether or not a man believes in 
his Father in heaven. If he does not, it is because, 
even when he thinks himself most intellectual, he is 
looking on the things which are before his face. He 
is limiting his vision. And while that does not affect 
the reality, it does affect his relation to it ; while 
he that is looking to see Him who is invisible feels 
the little inlet of his soul washed clean by the purify- 
ing tide of love, and in its backward sweep is carried 
into the Eternal Sea. That daily ebb and flow of 



THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 239 



the Divine life into the human soul brings at once 
humility and exaltation. 

Once more. He looks at the things which are 
before his face who with half-pitying smiles says, 
" Do you believe that Jesus is God ? " He looks 
at the story of that life, and sees the unconscious 
babe, the growing boy, the struggling man, the baf- 
fled reformer, the exiled patriot, the man of sorrows, 
weak and weeping, fearful and failing, tried, con- 
demned, and put to death. Surely we have here a 
man. Why obscure him by claiming for him that 
which destroys his true glory, which is human ? This 
is what is before the face. What is beyond ? This : 
that when he is most manly he is least like men ; 
when he is most intensely human he is most like our 
noblest thoughts of God. While the tears roll down 
his face he says, " I am the resurrection and the 
life." When he hangs on the cross he promises 
paradise to the thief. 

To say that Jesus is man is possible only when we 
give a new definition of humanity ; but when we do 
that, we must call him the Son of God. He himself 
has answered the question. When the Jews would 
stone him because he made himself equal to God, he 
said : The Scripture calls them gods to whom the 
word of God came ; it was because of the Divine life 
in them that the Divine Word could speak to them. 



240 THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 

It is because I am the Son of man, it is because I 
am what humanity was meant to be, that I can call 
myself the Son of God. 

The difference between us and Jesus is one of 
degree, not of kind. Is it in the humanity or in the 
divinity that this is true ? In both ; for they are one. 
To say that Jesus is man, meaning thereby such men 
as you and I, men with low ideals, and feeble attain- 
ments, and limited hopes, is a confusion of terms. 
To say that we are gods, hating, lustful, faithless, as 
we are, is blasphemy. But to say that Jesus is the 
Son of man, the normal, ideal man, the image after 
which the race was made, and that we, just as we are, 
have within us that which is akin to God and may be 
developed into the likeness of his Son, — to say this 
is to preach the Gospel. It is not a matter of indif- 
ference, it is of the utmost importance, that a man 
should look below the surface and have an answer to 
the question, " What think ye of the Christ ? " 

Once more. We soon shall die, and, what is worse, 
those We love must die. Look at that which is before 
your face. The hand so strong now plucks the sheets, 
the eye so clear now wanders from your gaze. The 
brain, the great workshop of a lifetime, has fallen 
into ruins. Is that all ? I know that to many it 
seems so. But some of us see more than is before 
the face. We see conscience. We hear it speak of 



THE POWER OF THE OBVIOUS. 241 

an eternal law, and we know that in the life of that 
dying man there was a true response. We know 
that there were sacrifice, and love, and a sense of 
justice, and a high sense of honor, and faith when 
si glit failed, and hope that lifted itself beyond the 
body and saw unspeakable things. It was these that 
made up character : the body was but the tool with 
which the image was engraved. That remains our 
helpful memory. That, we believe, stands in some 
form of beauty in the presence of the Eternal which 
it loved. 

There is no limit, my friends, to the pressure of 
the obvious, nor to the inspiration of the invisible. 
It begins with the child who learns by rote or sees 
the meaning. The one drags the man to the animal 
life, the other lifts him up to see the true life of man. 
One decks the worldling with foolish baubles, the 
other reveals the glory of a useful life. To one man 
God is a name, to another he is a Mighty Friend. 
To one Jesus is a curiosity, to another he is the 
Saviour. One man sees the temporal, which is about 
to perish ; the other the invisible, which is the eter- 
nal. Why should we speak of such things ? That 
each of us may examine himself, and pray, " Lord, 
let me not limit the vision of my soul to that which is 
before my face, but fill me with that vision of limit- 
less desires which is the foretaste of eternal life." 

16 



XVIII. 



ALL SOULS DAY. 

YESTERDAY was All Saints Day. We gathered 
together at that great feast of the Church, to 
celebrate the memory of those who have done great 
work in the Church of God, — the martyrs who have 
given their lives, the confessors who have endured 
great suffering, the teachers of the Church who have 
changed the current of theology, the great leaders 
and directors of the Church's course. 

But to-day is called in the calendar of the Bomish 
Church All Souls Day. It seems strange that such 
a day should have been dropped from the ritual year 
of the English Church. For what is it that All 
Souls Day brings to our minds ? It is not what we 
may call the great aristocracy of the Church, whose 
memory we celebrated yesterday. It is the greater 
thought, the democratic idea of the Church, the great 
mass of the people of God who have suffered and 
died bearing witness to the truth, all unknown ex- 
cept to the few who stood near them in the march 
of the host. All Souls Day brings to our minds the 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



243 



thought of the great multitude of God's faithful chil- 
dren that has passed from the seen to the unseen. 
And we ask ourselves on such a day as this, 
What is their life ? How do they employ them- 
selves ? What is their thought ? What is their 
condition ? 

The life of the dead is our subject for this 
morning. 

The first question that naturally suggests itself is 
the most important of all, — Do the dead live ? It 
seems so hard for us to understand how they live, 
so difficult to picture to our minds the conditions in 
which they continue to exist. There are men who 
say, It seems to us altogether improbable that there 
is any life beyond that which we now know. Life is 
so associated in our minds with this flesh and these 
bones, that it seems impossible to imagine the exist- 
ence of any life after the earthly frame has crumbled 
to the dust. 

Of course, if this be so, then there can be no God, 
because God can have no frame such as we have. 
And if life, spiritual life, is dependent upon this 
earthly frame, then of course there can be no such 
thing as a spiritual being existing apart from it. 

But if there be a God, — if there be such a thing in 
this universe as intelligence, love, will, self-conscious- 
ness, and self-determination, apart from any physical 



244 ALL SOULS DAY. 



form, — then, of course, it is possible that there 
should be many such lives. If God exist, then it is 
possible that the dead may live. If God does not 
exist, then the dead do not live. 

And so we bring it back finally, as we must bring 
back all questions, to the existence of God. If God 
live, then spiritual life is possible apart from this 
earthly tabernacle. If God does not live, it is not 
possible. 

So, then, unless we are prepared to say that we do 
not believe in the existence of God, but are only con- 
fused in our minds in regard to the condition of the 
dead, supposing them to live at all, what must their 
life be ? How shall we determine ? 

There was a man who lived near to Jesus Christ, 
who was filled with his spirit, and was his dearest 
friend. That man entered into a great spiritual ex- 
perience, and declared that he saw things and heard 
words such as no other human being has ever seen or 
heard. That was John. And in the seventh chapter 
of his Revelation, at the sixteenth and seventeenth 
verses, he has written these words : " They shall hun- 
ger no more, neither thirst any more ; neither shall 
the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb 
which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, 
and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters ; 
and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes." 

This is John's description of the life of the dead. 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



245 



Let us consider it this morning, and ask ourselves 
what it implies, and what light it throws on the great 
mystery which has so often perplexed us. 

The imagery is Oriental. To a dweller in the 
East, the first essential is protection from the heat 
of the sun, and from the radiating heat that pours 
forth in the evening, the one blasting the energies 
at noonday, the other enervating the spirits at the 
coming of the night ; and then waters to drink in 
a thirsty land. Those were the things that seemed 
to this man John, as they have seemed to every 
Oriental, the first conditions essential for life, — pro- 
tection from heat and abundance of living waters. 

And now let us enlarge our thought. From this 
simple statement given by St. John, in the imagery 
which would appeal to those who first heard these 
words, let us enlarge our thought, and say to our- 
selves, The life of the dead is a protected life. 
" They hunger no more, neither thirst any more ; 
neither doth the sun light on them, nor any heat." 
To how many has this thought brought great thank- 
fulness ! The lives we have known are protected 
from those ills which made life so hard to bear. 
Think of the great multitude that stands before God 
to-day. Think of the little children brought into 
this world all warped and twisted, so that they never 
knew how to play. Think of the young that have 



246 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



grown up with the promise of joy, only to see the 
cup of happiness dashed from their lips. Think of 
the lives that have been misunderstood, — the lives 
that have gone on day by day doing their duty, sacri- 
ficing themselves, seeking only for what was noble 
and pure and of good report, and all the time mis- 
understood, unappreciated, without sympathy, with- 
out the encouragement which they so much longed 
for, left to bear the burden and the heat of the day 
alone. Think of those who have lain for years and 
years on the bed of sickness, only asking that the 
day might come when their sufferings should have 
an end. Think of the women that have borne 
great burdens, — burdens not only of misapprehen- 
sion, of misunderstanding, but of cruel brutality, and 
of harshness, and of degrading oppression. Think of 
the multitudes that have risen day by day only to 
labor and toil, and have lain down at night too 
feeble, too weary, too much oppressed, for any 
thought of God, crushed by the burden and the 
labor of life. Think, in one word, my friends, of 
all that you and I have known, of all the great 
multitude of whom we have read, to whom this life 
has been bearable, but bearable only, — full of dis- 
appointment, full of pain, full of suffering, full of 
great sorrow and great discouragement. 

Now the word of St. John is that from all these 
things they are protected. " They hunger no more, 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



247 



neither thirst any more ; neither doth the sun light 
on them, nor any heat." A life free from care and 
responsibility, and the burden and heat of the day. 

That is the first thought that St. John would impress 
upon us in regard to the life of the dead. 0, as we 
think of it to-day, how grateful we must be ! There 
is no thought of what shall come to us ; only a great 
thankfulness that such good things have come to 
them, that their life is protected. Nevermore can 
those things that are so hard for us light on them. 
There never again can they enter into the life that 
they have once known, and find its bitterness, and its 
weariness, and its sadness. All Souls Day should 
be full of joy for the protected life of the dead. 

But that is not all. " They hunger no more, 
neither thirst any more ; and the Lamb which is 
in the midst of the throne doth lead them to foun- 
tains of living waters." A life of satisfaction ; a life 
in which every wish and aspiration of the soul is 
gratified. What a life is that, my friends ! I like 
to think, this morning, of the great multitude of 
God's children who have entered into that new 
world and into that new life, seeking such differ- 
ent things because their needs are so different. One 
soul seeks only for rest ; all that it needs is rest, and 
that is given it. Another soul needs peace and har- 
mony after the long struggle to make peace on earth. 
Another has been frightened, and longs for the sense 



248 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



of safety, and that is given. Another has all through 
life been thirsting for the sight of the Eternal Beauty, 
which no picture, no statue, no naming of the sky at 
sunset, could adequately express. " We shall see," 
said the prophet long ago, speaking for these artis- 
tic souls, — " we shall see the King in his beauty." 
Others have found the satisfaction of their souls in 
" the sound of the harpers playing on the harps." 
The great multitude whose souls have been stirred 
by music, and yet in the most glorious symphony, in 
the noblest chorus, have always felt the human dis- 
cord that underlaid the harmony, — there they are 
satisfied, there the perfect harmony of the Eternal 
Life soothes, and strengthens, and invigorates, and 
inspires them. 

Others have laid hold of the tree of the knowl- 
edge of life. All through life they hungered for 
knowledge, and yet all getting of knowledge was 
the getting also of sorrow. There it is changed. 
There the tree of life is seen to be the tree of 
knowledge. Drinking deep of the Divine life, filling 
themselves with the life of the Lamb of God, these 
souls have found that not through knowledge .did 
they gain life, but that through life they have gained 
knowledge. 

how wonderful it is to think of this vast ex- 
pansion of humanity, as the flower expands that has 
been transplanted into a more genial clime ! It is 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



249 



good to think of the lives that are satisfied to-day, as 
they stand before the throne of God, and are led by 
the Lamb to the living fountains of waters. How 
different it all is! Who can describe it ? It is like 
the announcement that should come forth from the 
King that the gates of the city are open on every 
side, and that his people may come in to some great 
feast that has been prepared for them. How we see 
them crowding in ! Each man starts for the gate 
that stands opposite the little hut in which he has 
lived. Multitudes are crowding in from the north 
and the south and the east and the west. Here are 
the little children, not content to go in with the 
great multitude through the arching gate that is 
spanning the walls of the city, but finding some lit- 
tle place broken in the wall that they crawl through 
with laughter and joy, glad because it is different 
from the common way on which the multitude is 
pressing. 

The life satisfied ; the life rejoicing in the knowl- 
edge of the thing that it has dreamed of as impos- 
sible ; the life rejoicing in the knowledge that every 
hope that has shot across its sky was the witness to a 
reality which God had prepared for them that love 
him; — we take it all up, and we put it into the words 
of the old hymn we have sung so often, — 

" Every longing satisfied, 
With full salvation blessed." 



250 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



Full salvation, my friends. Perfect health of the 
soul that has been redeemed by the blood of the 
Lamb, — the perfect health of the soul that has found 
at last its home, standing in the presence of God. 
Sin has fallen away like some filthy garment, and 
the soul stands in the presence of the King, and 
the glory of the King clothes it, and it finds its 
satisfaction in beholding his beauty. 

And how has all this come to pass ? How has this 
great change been effected ? Is it the result of a 
mere change of place ? Is it the result merely of the 
falling off of this fleshly covering ? We cannot think 
so, and St. John would not have us think so, for he 
tells us that this protection and this satisfaction in 
the new life come with the leading of the Lamb. 
"And the Lamb shall lead them forth." 

The Lamb leads those who follow. The spirit of 
Jesus is typified by the Lamb. The spirit of perfect 
sacrifice is meant by the Lamb. And that spirit has 
entered into the lives of these men and women, and 
these little children. It is the new spirit that has 
taken possession of them in the new life that has 
made the protection and the eternal satisfaction. It 
opens up before us the thought of the endless pro- 
gress of the dead. They are being led by the Lamb. 
There is no limit to be put to the glory and the joy 
of this life. Day by day, — if we may speak of days, — 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



251 



day by day they are being led by the Lamb. The liv- 
ing water is never dried up. The thirst of the great 
multitude is unable to consume it. More and more 
they are led on by the Lamb, the perfect Sacrifice, the 
Son of God, the Life in which God is well pleased. 

That is the life, my friends, that the dead are 
following ; and in following it they find their eternal 
satisfaction and their undying joy; — a life protected; 
a life satisfied ; a life from which monotony has been 
forever banished, because there is eternal progress 
under the leadership of the Lamb of God. That is 
the life that St. John brings before us, and which we 
would call to mind on this day. 

And now turn back from this picture of the life 
of the dead to that other one with which we are so 
much more familiar, which we may call the death 
of the living. We are not protected. On us the 
sun does light and the heat does burn ; with us 
the sorrow and sin, and suffering and pain, and mis- 
understanding and cruel suspicion, and unkindness 
and weariness, and discouragement and hopelessness 
exist. How different is the life that you and I know 
from the life that St. John has revealed as the life of 
the dead ! Here there is not protection ; there is 
not satisfaction ; there is not daily progress in the 
knowledge of the love and power of God. How sad 
it all is! How dark the picture is, as compared 



252 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



with the glory that is revealed by the other ! And I 
think it is because of this picture, the picture of dis- 
satisfaction, the picture of the life unprotected, the 
picture of the life that does not make progress in 
holiness and joy, — I think it is because of the pres. 
ence of this picture that men so often ask themselves, 
Things being as they are, how is it possible that the 
dead should have perfect joy ? How can it be that 
the mother can be satisfied, and full of happiness, 
and absolutely content, while the son for whom she 
prayed so long is wandering in the paths of sin ? 
How can the father be satisfied when the daughter 
that he loved and honored and respected is dis- 
gracing his name on earth ? How can the friend 
be joyful when the friend that on earth was dearer 
than life itself is left to bear the burden and heat 
of the day alone ? How can his joy be perfect, while 
there is loneliness and weariness for the friend that 
has been left behind ? 

Some such thoughts as these come into our minds 
as we consider the life of the dead ; and we ask our- 
selves, How is it possible that their joy can be com- 
plete when our life is so weary, and our burden is 
so heavy, and our pain is so keen ? 

Now as I read these words of St. John it seems to 
me that he entered into that great mystery. And he 
has not pretended, I think, that their joy is complete. 
He felt as the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



253 



felt, who wrote concerning the dead : " God having 
provided some better thing for ns, that they without 
us should not be made perfect." To the writer of that 
Epistle it seemed impossible that the dead should 
enter into the full perfection of the glory of the 
eternal life until all the host had been gathered up. 
It was like the march into the Promised Land. The 
multitude was winding its way through the desert, 
and at last it came to the banks of the Jordan. 
How shall it enter in ? It seemed to this man as 
if it were not any longer one great single column 
that was entering slowly into the promised land, the 
rear in the desert bitten by the serpents, parched 
by the heat, thirsty for the want of water, and the 
others luxuriating in the land of milk and honey. 
No, to him it seems as if the true joy had indeed 
begun, but was not perfected, — as if the multi- 
tude were halting on the very brink of the eternal 
glory of God, waiting for the coming up of the 
rear column that was still on the pilgrimage in 
the wilderness. 

That is the thought that St. John, I think, would 
present to our minds. He does not wish us to be- 
lieve that the dead have entered into an oblivion of 
the misery, and the weakness, and the weariness of 
the human life that they have left behind. 

Then we say, If they have not forgotten, how can 
they be happy ? how is it possible that their hearts 



254 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



should not be wrung with pain as they look back and 
remember that which they once knew, as they look 
down and see that with which we are so familiar ? 

St. John did not believe that their happiness was 
complete. He did believe that their life was pro- 
tected. He did believe that they were being satisfied 
day by day, because they were following the Lamb. 
But he adds, " God shall wipe away all tears from 
off their faces." Tears ! Yes, tears in that glorious 
life, — tears that must be there, because of the incom- 
pleteness of human life, because of the misery and 
the sin, with its penalty, of those who are so dear 
to the dead who know the life of God. 

" God shall wipe away all tears from off their 
faces." It is inevitable that they should sorrow. 
It is no less inevitable that their sorrow should be 
comforted of God. See what it would be were it 
otherwise. You and I, under the weight of our bur- 
den, in the midst of our temptation, with the weari- 
ness and the disgust of life which are so often so 
strong within us, — we, my friends, in all our in- 
completeness, are yet able to lift up our hearts and 
rejoice at the life into which the dead have entered. 
Now if they, in the great joy that has come to them, 
have become oblivious of us, then their life is a worse 
life than ours. It is the apotheosis of selfishness. 
They have entered into their joy and forgotten 
us. Like the chief butler who was delivered from 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



255 



the prison, Joseph remembered him, but he forgot 
Joseph. Such a thought is impossible. If their life 
is a following of the Lamb, it must be that their sym- 
pathy and their love for us are infinitely deeper and 
stronger than our thankfulness for their great joy. 

No, the life of the dead is not yet perfect ; and it 
cannot be perfect until the number of God's elect is 
full. There is sorrow and there are tears in the 
heavenly life. But that sorrow is comforted of God, 
and those tears are wiped away by God. 

We seem to see. then, the life of the dead. It is 
protected from those ills with which we are familiar. 
It is being satisfied day by day. It is progressing 
under the leadership of the Lamb. And yet there 
comes the remembrance of the sorrow of life. There 
comes a flashing insight into the temptation of life. 
There comes an awful pang at the revelation of the 
sin of those that are loved. And yet the life is com- 
forted, because it is enveloped by the power and the 
glory and the love of God, who is all wisdom and all 
might and abounding mercy. 

The details of our life may be no more understood 
by them than theirs are by us. Only standing before 
the throne of God there comes the eternal comfort 
that must always come with the remembrance of 
power and wisdom and goodness. And so their tears 
are wiped away. So their faces are dried from the 
tear-drops that stain them, as the roses are dried 



256 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



from the rain on the summer afternoon as the sun 
breaks from the cloud and kisses them and dries 
their faces. It is not a life without sorrow. It is a 
life comforted of God. 

Thus, then, my friends, we think to-day of the 
dead. We think of them and rejoice. We do not 
stand unmoved at an open grave. Jesus wept. We 
do not pretend that pain is not pain, nor sorrow sor- 
row. We do not call ourselves Stoics, men who are 
not affected by the ills of life. We call ourselves the 
disciples and friends of the Man of sorrows. But we 
try to see the vision of John, and we see that the 
dead whom we have loved are protected from every 
ill. We rejoice that they are being satisfied. We lift 
up our hearts in thankfulness to God because we see 
them follow the Lamb. Our hearts are filled with 
an inexpressible and pathetic joy as we see them com- 
forted of God. 

And what is their word to us ? It is, Follow the 
Lamb. Strive to have the spirit of Jesus Christ. 
For they that have that spirit have now the foretaste 
of the life of the dead. The ills of life are not so 
great : 

" I fear no ill with Thee at hand to bless, 
Ills have no weight, and tears no bitterness." 

Follow the Lamb ; for in following Him and striv- 
ing to have His spirit, there comes the satisfaction 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



257 



that the soul can find in no other way ; and all the 
joy and beauty and glory of life is found to have its 
interpretation and its full realization in the beauty of 
the life of Jesus Christ. 

Follow the Lamb. So that each day comes a pro- 
gress in holiness and knowledge and joy. 

Follow the Lamb. And so you shall know the 
comfort that comes of God. They who live that life 
now shall enter into the new city and find that it 
is not strange. Just as we felt when we have come 
to some city of which we have read, or pictures of 
which we have seen. We have felt, Why, I have 
often been here before. And yet, as day by day 
went on and we beheld new glories and new splen- 
dors of the city, we felt that we had had indeed the 
foretaste, we knew in some sense what to expect, but 
no expectation could begin to equal the realization of 
the glory and the splendor of the new land. 

And so, if we follow the Lamb, our lives will be in 
some sense protected. Our souls will begin to know 
the satisfaction of the life of God, and we shall be 
comforted by the remembrance of eternal wisdom, 
almighty power, and undying love. And then when 
the end comes for you and me, and you and I are 
spoken of as the dead, we shall enter into that last 
experience, and find it one of infinite joy and infinite 
peace. For when you and I have reached that heav- 
enly land, and stand on the borders of eternity, we 

17 



258 



ALL SOULS DAY. 



shall not forget the life that has been lived. As our 
souls are satisfied, as we find comfort in the Eternal 
Protection, as we follow the Lamb from one fountain 
to another and drink with exceeding joy, there shall 
come from time to time, climbing up and falling on 
the shore of the eternal life, some great wave of mem- 
ory ; and we shall look back to this little island in 
the eternal sea and behold the ones we love, who, like 
shipwrecked sailors, look across the great waste, and 
wait for the coming of the ship that takes them home. 
And no doubt a cry will go up from us as we remem- 
ber what life was, and what to them life is. But in 
that very moment we shall be enveloped in the eter- 
nal arms, and the power and the wisdom and the 
love of God shall comfort our hearts, and the glory 
of his presence shall wipe away all tears from off our 
faces. 

My dear people, remember the words of St. Paul, 
" If by any means I might attain to the resurrection 
of the dead." Remember the words of our Lord, " In 
your patience ye shall win your souls." 



XIX. 



PHILLIPS BROOKS: THE LOVE OF GOD 
AND THE SERVICE OF MAN. 



/ love the Father; and as the Father gave me com- 
mandment, even so do I. — St. John, xiv. 31. 

\\ 7E buried him like a king, for so he was. Had 



" " a stranger stood in our city and asked what 
this great movement meant, he could have read the 
history of his life in his burial. For it was the Loyal 
Legion that took possession of the dead body and 
stood in silent guard beside it while the multitude 
gazed for the last time upon his face ; — and then into 
the church he loved so dearly and served so faith- 
fully the young men who seemed to symbolize per- 
petual youth, bore aloft the great body about which 
his clergy and people gathered to pray God for 
strength to help in time of need ; — and then it was 
the great multitude of the city that he had served for 
so many years, that he loved with such a deep and 
abiding love, that he glorified because of the hope 
that filled his heart for every child of God, who 
filled the great square and sang the hymn he loved 
so well,— 




260 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



" O God, our help in ages past, 
Our hope for years to come, 
Our shelter from the stormy blast, 
And our eternal home ! " — 

and then, through the College yard where the hun- 
dreds and hundreds of those young men whose joy 
it had been to listen to him, whose inspiration he had 
often been, stood with uncovered heads, the funeral 
procession took its way beneath the tolling of the 
College bell ; and lastly, about the grave stood the 
friends, disciples, and faithful women that had fol- 
lowed him to the end. 

Now, in what did his kingliness consist ? For it 
is inevitable that we speak of that to-day, we can 
think of nothing else, and therefore we can speak 
of nothing else. It was indeed a marvellous life, it 
was so rich in many qualities ; there was that beau- 
tiful poetic faculty allied with the power to centre the 
whole attention on the simplest details of business ; 
there was that marvellous love of humanity, and the 
capacity to draw one friend to his heart ; there was 
freedom from superstition, and deep and awful rev- 
erence ; there was that great belief in liberty, and 
yet the constant sense of service ; there was that 
life so capable of enjoyment, and yet so able to weep 
with them that wept. It was not, my friends, it 
seems to me, — it was not that he possessed one gift 



LOVE OF GOD AND SERVICE OF MAN 261 

in excess, but that he held together so many different 
gifts in perfect and beautiful harmony. The things 
that are so often divorced in other men's lives were 
wedded in him. There, it seems to me, is found the 
greatness of his character, and, like all great men, he 
struck the roots of his nature deep down into the soil 
of the time and country of which he formed a part. 

Think what a time it was when he was born. Then 
Goethe's influence was beginning to be felt for the 
first time in England ; Coleridge's mysticism was 
leading men to look beyond the clouds to their eter- 
nal home ; Wordsworth's thrush-like voice was at 
last finding its echo in the hearts of weary men 
who plodded along the dusty way ; Carlyle was be- 
ginning to thunder at the gates of sham ; Emerson 
was flowing like some wide, deep river leading men 
to the eternal sea. While he was a youth, Browning 
was giving forth those bugle blasts of optimism that 
awoke an echo in his heart ; but, above all, his friend 
and companion, Tennyson, was drawing out those 
new stops in the great organ of English speech 
which are destined, while that language is spoken, 
to strengthen and ennoble the human race. How 
many times we have heard him say, " You men were 
born too late. You have never known what it was 
to stand in the college yard with the last poem in 
your hand, and know that it had been sung across 
the seas to you^ 



262 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



All that had a deep and abiding influence on his 
life. That marvellous diction, that rich and gor- 
geous style, that quickness of perception in regard 
to literature, that thirst for poetry, so that at the last 
his bed was covered with the books that had been 
his friends and companions in that most lonely life, 
— its influence is seen in all that he did ; it begot 
the fastidious taste, the keen appreciation of beauty, 
the high ideal of literature ; and that was one reason 
why he always turned back with such passionate love 
to the great University that bore him. What had it 
not done for him ? It had led him to drink at the 
source of thought. It had introduced him to those 
who, though he never saw them, became his truest 
friends. It was partly, I think, because he lived 
when he did, because he received, as it were from 
the writer's hand, the latest message to the world, 
that he so rejoiced in the present, and felt that no 
age had been richer in the gifts of the Spirit, no time 
had more strongly felt the influence of the character 
of Christ, 

And then, again, his love for righteousness, his 
uncompromising belief in the purifying power of free- 
dom. How it was beaten and welded together by 
the blows of the Civil War ! He never outgrew the 
influence of that dark hour, and nothing that ever 
came in Church or State could shake his faith in the 
people and in the purifying power of freedom, not 



LOVE OF GOD AND SERVICE OF MAN. 263 



because it freed men from restraint, but because it 
opened up to every man the possibility of the com- 
pletion of his character by the exercise of all of his 
faculties untrammelled by oppression, and called to 
their highest opportunity by the voice of God him- 
self. 

So it was in his relation to the new reformation in 
which he was playing so great a part. When lie was 
a youth, Calvinism was beginning already to weaken 
and totter to its fall. He heard Theodore Parker 
thunder at the gates of the castle that had set itself 
against Calvinism, and he knew that no negation 
that could be preached would ever satisfy the thirst 
of the souls of men for the truth of the Living God. 

He was born when the Tractarian movement in 
England was at its height ; he saw the beginning of 
that larger knowledge which has shaken the faith 
of so many; he neither turned to the ecclesiasticism 
which built barriers to stem the flow of the free in- 
quiring spirit, nor, on the other hand, did he lose 
himself in the wastes of speculation till he knew not 
whence he came or whither he was going. 

It was in the midst of those days, in the latter for- 
ties and the beginning of the fifties, when the storm 
clouds were gathering on every side, that he heard the 
voice of that divine 1 who, he has told me again and 
again, was the greatest preacher that this country 

1 Alexander H. Vinton, at that time Rector of St. Paul's Church. 



264 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



has ever heard, holding up to the eyes of men the 
character of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. And 
to that Mastership he gave himself soul and body; 
he believed that if Jesus had ever saved He could 
save to-day, and in that faith he never faltered. It 
was no dictum of the Church in which he believed ; it 
was no tradition that had come down through the ages 
that satisfied that soul ; it was belief in Jesus Christ 
as the Son of God, manifesting the sonship of every 
man and woman on this earth to God. That was his 
Gospel, " Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Son 
of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God." 

That was his message. Believe that Jesus is the 
manifestation of the Divine Life, and you will know 
in that moment of belief that the Divine Life is a 
part of you. It was no dictum ; it was no tradition ; 
it was no creed, in the sense in which that word is 
often used. It was the conviction that he was one 
with God, because lie was united to Jesus Christ, and 
that every man was essentially a part of God, and that 
the Gospel was to be the illuminator of the darkness of 
men's hearts to show them the glory which belonged 
to them. 

And so he held to that faith and held to his Church 
with such deep love, with such loyalty to its order, 
with such a firm belief and high hope for its possibili- 
ties ; and yet he neither believed, nor wished men to 
think that he believed, that his Church was the only 



LOVE OF GOD AND SERVICE OF MAN. 265 



manifestation of the life of the Son of Man, — the Son 
of God upon this earth. Far from it ; he believed in 
it and loved it, chiefly, I think, because he thought it 
was the most catholic of all the companies of disciples, 
because to him it was the house of so many rooms. 
"No place," — how often he has said it, — -"no place 
like Boston to preach the Gospel ; no Church like 
ours of which to be a minister." And yet that loyalty 
and love enabled him, because the roots of his being 
struck down deep into the life of the Son of God, — 
enabled him to have that vast tolerance that em- 
braced and took in men of other denominations, so 
that to-day throughout the English-speaking world his 
name is an inspiration in every company of Christ's 
disciples. 

How he gloried in the rectitude of the Puritans ! 
How he rejoiced in the free spirit that blew through 
Unitarianism ! How his heart was moved by the 
revivals of Moody and the philanthropy of General 
Booth ! No movement of the human spirit towards 
God was without his sympathy and his help ; for 
wherever the spirit of man was troubled there he 
saw Bethesda, and the angel of our God descending 
into the troubled waters. So he loved his own, and 
loved them to the end. But he loved also those of 
other names, with other ways of expressing them- 
selves, for they were all the children of one God; 
and out of all the boundaries of the churches, beyond 



266 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



the confines of Christianity, his great spirit roamed 
to welcome the beginning of day in the twilight of 
heathenism ; — ay, deep down into the darkness 
where men cry like some lost child ; in the midst 
of the quarrelsomeness of the children over the divis- 
ion of the inheritance ; among those who, like girls 
love to deck themselves; — though it wearied him, 
and exasperated him, and called forth sometimes the 
strong expression of his indignation, it was but for 
a moment ; he turned again, and saw the good that 
held them up and made them lovable. He hated con- 
troversy, and sought wherever he might be to find 
the companionship of the Son of God. He had the 
power 

" To see a good in evil, and a hope 
In ill-success, to sympathize, he proud 
Of their half reasons, faint aspirings, dim 
Struggles for truth, their poorest fallacies, 
Their prejudice, and fears, and cares, and doubts 
Which all touch upon nobleness, despite 
Their error, all tend upwardly though weak, 
Like plants in mines which never saw the sun, 
But dream of him, and guess where he may be, 
And do their best to climb and get to him." 

All this that Paracelsus knew not and failed, he knew, 
and therefore was strong and loving. 

And so, my friends, about his Creed. When the 
storm of misrepresentation burst upon him, even to 
those who were nearest to him he would only say : 
" It is a simple question of honesty. How can they 



LOVE OF GOD AND SERVICE OF MAN. 267 

believe that I would say the Creed if I did not believe 
the Creed ? " On that he took his stand. If any man 
cared to look into that great face and say, " I believe 
that you are a liar," then he might do it. He feared 
no man. And yet how did he believe his Creed ? Not 
as a piece of tradition ; not as something that had 
once been a power in the past, but of no power now, 
but must be recited simply in order that men might 
receive the emoluments that came because of that 
recitation. Far from it. He said his Creed with that 
free spirit in which he did everything else, because 
those grand historic words did express his profound 
conviction in regard to the Gospel of our Saviour, that 
God is our Creator-Father, that Jesus Christ is the 
manifestation of the Living God, that the Spirit of 
God is in the heart of every man. The Creed was 
to him the symbol of the faith once delivered to the 
saints. But the words of the Church must be like 
the words of Jesus, — spirit and life. And he would 
not be much troubled by this man's or that man's 
interpretation of his belief ; nor would he be driven 
out of the synagogue because he could not pronounce 
the Shibboleth, but he would say, with free, glad heart, 
the great historic words of the Creed, saying them 
with an intensity of belief that I think many of us 
fail to understand. How often he used to say, u What 
the world needs is not less belief, but more belief. 
As the years roll on, the world will become more 



268 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



faithful, believing more and more." It was not 
quantity that he thought of, but the quality of faith, 
not the amount that can be written in a book, but 
the intensity of the spirit's apprehension. 

Now, how did he lead this life ? How was it that 
he who joyed so in beauty was never enervated ? 
How was it that he who knew, as none of us can 
know, the misery and disgrace and sin of life, could 
always have lived in such an atmosphere of hope ? 
How was it that he could be so loyal to his Church, 
and yet so liberal in his sympathy with those with 
whom in many respects he could not agree ? How 
was it that he could have such faith in freedom, when 
he saw how the removing of the barriers often leads 
to degradation ? How was it that with his sweet 
poetic fancy he could bring himself to the drudgery 
of work ? How was it, my friends, that he, with his 
great heart beating for every noble cause, could stand 
and reveal himself to one or two ? How was it that 
with all he had to do he never complained ? How 
was it that, whenever man, woman, or a little child 
went to him, he rose up instantly and gladly ? How 
many, how many of you must have had him stand 
and look from his great height into your eyes when 
you had asked him to preach somewhere, to do some 
work, to undertake something more in the midst of 
that tumultuous life, and say, " I thank you for this 



LOVE OF GOD AND SERVICE OF MAN. 269 



opportunity." Yes, my friends, we see him as he 
was. The spirit of a little child was enthroned in 
the midst of iris life, and it led that huge frame to 
stand and serve as a servant at the banquet of life ; 
it turned that mighty mind to worship truth ; it led 
that great heart to beat with love for all who suf- 
fered and were sad ; and to rejoice with those 
who had begun to see the kindness of their God ; 
it led him to do the simplest duty day after day 
with a glad and cheerful heart. And why ? Be- 
cause he loved the Father, he loved the Father, he 
lived in the consciousness of God, and the simplest 
duty that came before him was referred to eternal 
principles ; the troubled and broken heart was seen 
in the light of the love of Jesus Christ, and the 
smoking flax was to him the indication of the 
presence of the living God ; he lived in the love of 
his Father, and therefore whatsoever his Father 
commanded he tried to do. And his Father's com- 
mands were not words that fell from the stars, they 
were the broken accents of humanity ; the shameful 
woman that brought her baby and laid it at his feet, 
and said, "What shall I do?" The command of 
his Father was the message of the dying suicide at 
midnight in the hospital, " Come to me before I am 
gone." The command of his Father was the cry of 
the little child, lost, not knowing its father's name, 
or its father's home; and he rose up instantly, be- 



270 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



cause he loved the Father, and did the commands 
that his Father gave him. God and opportunity,— 
these were the poles between which the sphere of 
that noble life did turn from the rising to the set- 
ting of its day. 

What has that life to say to you and to me ? 0, as 
that vast multitude lifted up Wesley's hymn, and cried, 

" Cover my defenceless head 
With the shadow of Thy wing," 

how many a soul must have felt that now he must 
live nearer God. God help us so to live ! God bless 
us in our great opportunity to gather up a little of 
that spirit and make it known in home, in school- 
room, in the warehouse where we transact our 
business, in the city streets, and in the church ! 
God make us purer, simpler, truer, more diligent, 
nobler men and women, because of that example 
which it has been our privilege to see, and know, 
and love ! 



XX. 



PHILLIPS BROOKS: THE PORTION OF THE 
FIRST-BORN. 1 

And it came to pass, when they were gone over, that 
Elijah said unto Elisha, Ask what I shall do for thee, be- 
fore I be taken away from thee. And Elisha said, I pray 
thee, let a double portion of thy spirit be upon me. — 
2 Kings, ii. 9. 

THIS wonderfully dramatic story of the ascension 
of Elijah is typical of what goes on in the life 
of many a man who is called upon to pass through 
such an experience as that of Elisha's ; to have that 
which is the dearest and greatest thing to him taken 
from his sight. Think, for a moment, what the story 
is. Elijah tells Elisha that the Lord has called him 
to go to Bethel, and asks him to remain hehind. But 
Elisha will not part from him. The sons of the 
prophets at Bethel come forth to Elisha, and tell him 
that it has been revealed to them that to-day his 
Master shall be taken away. It has been revealed 
to him, too, only it is impossible for him to speak of 
it. "I know it," he says, "hold ye your peace." 

1 Delivered before the Boston Young Men's Christian Union, Sun- 
day evening, January 29, 1893. 



272 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



Again Elijah says to him, " Tarry here, for the 
Lord hath sent me to Jericho." And again he says, 
" I will not leave thee." The sons of the prophets at 
Jericho come forth to tell him that his Master shall be 
taken away ; and again he says, " I know it ; hold ye 
your peace." 

Once more Elijah tells him to tarry there, for the 
Lord hath sent him to pass over Jordan ; but he breaks 
out with a great cry, " As the Lord liveth, and as thy 
soul liveth, I will not leave thee." And so they two 
went on. 

Do you not know some such experience as that ? I 
am sure that many of us do. There has come first the 
intimation that this companionship which has been 
the joy and the comfort and the glory of our life is 
to be ended ; and then friends, with officious kindli- 
ness, insist upon telling us explicitly that which we 
ourselves have long known, but of which we cannot 
speak. It seems as if it could not be. We say to our 
Master, as Elisha said to his, " As the Lord liveth, I 
will not leave thee. I will go with thee to Bethel, to 
Jericho, over Jordan ; wheresoever thou goest, I will 
go too. It is not possible that my life should go on, a 
life that has been so wrapped up in yours, a life that 
has known this companionship for so many years, — 
it is not possible that it should go on without that 
companionship. As the Lord liveth, and as thy soul 
liveth, I will not leave thee." 

And yet it must be. 



THE PORTION OF THE FIRST-BORN. 273 



Look once more at the story. After they have 
passed over Jordan, Elijah turns to Elisha and says, 
" Before I be taken away from thee, ask what I shall 
do for thee." And Elisha says, " Let a double portion 
of thy spirit be upon me." Elijah answers, " This is 
a hard thing that thou hast asked ; nevertheless, if thou 
see me when I am taken from thee, it shall be so unto 
thee ; but if not, it shall not be so." 

What does this mean ? We sometimes think that 
what Elisha was asking of Elijah was, that he should 
be endowed with twice the power that the great 
prophet, whom he called the chariot and horseman 
of Israel, had had. And Elijah's answer, " Thou hast 
asked a hard thing," seems to lend color to this 
interpretation. 

But that is not the meaning of it. What Elisha is 
asking is that he shall have the portion of the first- 
born. The old Jewish law required that, when the 
father died and his property was to be distributed, 
the first-born son should have a double portion. The 
great law of primogeniture, which has lasted down 
into our own day, has played an important part in the 
history of the world ; and whatever may have been 
its disadvantages, it certainly has served to keep 
together great and noble properties. By dividing 
equally among all the sons, the property, which had 
been in some sort the outward sign of the nobility 
of the family to which it belonged, would soon have 

18 



274 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



been dissipated ; but by passing it on to one son, who 
should feel at once the glory and the responsibility 
of the heritage of the material property that had con- 
tinued in the same line from generation to generation, 
it would remain a power for good. 

Now, this is what Elisha is asking of Elijah. Let 
it not be, he says, let it not be that I shall stand to 
you only as one of the sons of the prophets who are 
on yonder hillside, standing afar off and wondering at 
this strange thing which has come to pass. Through 
all these years we have walked together. What I am, 
you have made me. Now let me stand to you in the 
relation of the first-born son. In the dividing of thy 
spiritual property, grant to me the double portion. 
And Elijah's answer is somewhat like the answer of 
the Lord to the sons of Zebedee, who asked to sit on 
the right hand, and on the left, in his glory. " It is 
not mine to give," says Jesus ; " but it shall be given 
to them for whom it has been prepared by my Father." 
" You ask a hard thing," says Elijah ; " nevertheless, 
if thou shalt see me when I am taken from thee, it 
shall be done unto thee ; if not, it shall not be done." 

The great gifts of life are not the result of favorit- 
ism. There is the everlasting law that he who seeks 
shall find, that he who has shall receive more. If 
you have capacity to receive God's gifts, no gift of 
God shall be withheld from you. If you can see me, 
says Elijah, if, when I am taken from your physical 



THE PORTION OF THE FIRST-BORN. 275 

sight there enter into your soul the unalterable con- 
viction that I am still alive, that the power that has 
manifested itself through my life is manifesting itself 
still, if the reality of my existence so takes possession 
of you that when I am taken away from you you can 
see me, then you shall have the double portion of my 
spirit. When the property that I have accumulated 
is divided, you shall have the double portion, and 
stand to me as the first-born son. 

Then comes the last step in this story. The friends 
are parted one from another. Elijah goes up by a 
whirlwind into heaven. Elisha sees him, but he cries, 
" My father, my father, thou art the chariot of Israel 
and the horsemen thereof! What is to become of 
Israel ? What is to become of the Church of God ? 
What is to become of that great work which, by thy 
power, has been built up? My father, my father, 
thou art gone. 

How that cry, my friends, has rung through this 
community in these last days. How many a man has 
felt, as Elisha did, that the chariot and horsemen of 
Israel have been taken away ! 

But the story does not end there. We are told that 
after that passionate burst of grief the man of God 
turned to the work that was before him, and, taking 
up the mantle of Elisha that fell from him, went 
back and stood by the bank of the river of Jordan, 
and smote the waters, and cried, " Where is the 



276 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



Lord God of Elijah ? " And when he had so cried, 
the waters parted for him, and he went over as his 
master had done. He went to the village on the other 
side, and, when the people told him that the waters 
thereof were bitter, he took a cruise of salt and sweet- 
ened those waters. He took up the mantle of Elijah, 
he called upon the God of Elijah, and he began, — in 
spite of his loneliness, in spite of his despondency, — 
he began to do the great work that through all these 
years Elijah had so magnificently done. 

I have chosen these words to speak to you about 
to-night, my friends, not that we might find in this 
bid book a story that reminds us of our own experi- 
ence, but rather that we may find in that story an 
inspiration for the life that is now before us. 

He, who has been to us as the chariot and horsemen 
of Israel has been taken away. What shall we do ? 

I ask you, first of all, not to let this great expe- 
rience of your life pass away without claiming the 
position that belongs to you. The whole world 
mourns to-day. Other cities beside our own are 
draped in black. But we, we the people of Boston, 
have a right that none others have to ask that the 
double portion of his spirit should be upon us. Let 
us claim our advantages as the first-born sons. Let 
us remember his love for this city, let us remember 
his belief in this city, let us remember the years of 



THE PORTION OF THE FIRST-BORN. 277 



labor and the splendid inspiration that he has imparted 
to us. Let others stand on the hillside and watch 
from afar this great thing. But you and I have seen 
him pass into the heavens, you and I are convinced 
that that life which has been such a power for good 
tor so many years is as alive to-day, ay, is more 
alive to-day than ever. We see him. We know 
that that life is a power still for goodness, is an 
inspiration to some soul, is a manifestation, some- 
where, of the glory and power of God. 

We cry, " My father, my father, thou art the chariot 
of Israel and the horsemen thereof ! " That cry is 
natural. That cry is inevitable. But let there mingle 
with it the prayer, Grant that a double portion of 
thy spirit may be upon me. Grant, now that thy 
spiritual property is to be divided, that it may not 
be dissipated, that it may not pass away into many 
hands, and so fail to be the power that it might be 
were it kept together by one strong, loving son. Let 
the city of Boston claim its place as the first-born, and 
ask that the double portion of the spiritual property 
may be left to its keeping, determining that by the 
power of God it shall be used for all good and noble 
and true purposes. 

But with the prayer must go action. Let us take 
up the mantle of the prophet that has fallen from him. 
What is the mantle of the prophet ? The mantle, the 
outward covering of the man, is that which is most 



278 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



characteristic of him. When we come to turn over 
those things that were associated with the life of some 
dear friend, there is nothing that brings the face and 
form of that friend back to us with so much power as 
some garment that in life he wore. That is the man- 
tle, the outward sign of the man's presence, the most 
characteristic thing in his life. 

That is what I ask you to take up to-night. And 
yet, you may well say, How can we take up the 
mantle of this man ? How can we be what he was ? 
Indeed, we cannot be what he was. And yet, I think 
if we ask ourselves what was the most characteristic 
thing in him, what was the one thing that was most 
personal in his life, it will throw light upon our per- 
plexity. We cannot take up the great gifts that he 
had. There is a sense in which those gifts can hardly 
be called his own. We cannot take up that magnifi- 
cent physical presence ; but indeed that physical pres- 
ence was an inheritance, and, in that sense, can hardly 
be called his own. It is not the gifts of a man always 
that are peculiarly his own. It is the will and spirit 
with which those gifts are used. 

Now, if you ask what was the most characteristic 
trait of Phillips Brooks's personality, I think you can 
find it in the words of the old preacher, " Whatsoever 
thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." That 
was the characteristic of this man. We remember 
his genius, but we forget his labor. We marvel at the 



THE PORTION OF THE FIRST-BORN. 279 



words that flowed so freely from his great mind, but 
we forget the silent, lonely hours in which he dug 
deep the channels for the thought to flow. 

That a man should have been able to preach as he 
did, was certainly a great marvel. That a man should 
have been able to carry on all the multitudinous de- 
tails of such a life as his, without apparent hurry, 
without fretfulness, with the absence of friction, that 
is another marvel. But, when you combine the two 
in one man, when you see a man with that marvellous 
power of swaying the multitudes, and that rare gift 
of giving his whole life to one particular soul that 
came before him with its grief, with its burden, with 
its sin, with its doubt, with its joy, then indeed you 
have at once a marvellous character. And yet, in all 
its marvel, one that may be most truly imitated. For 
what you and I have to do in order to take up his 
mantle is, not to receive his gifts, but to have his 
spirit of self-consecration. 

That was his mantle, that was his characteristic, 
that whatsoever he found to do, he did it with all 
his might. Ay, rather, he did it with the might of 
God. He did it in the spirit of the prophet of whom 
I have been speaking so much this evening. His con- 
stant thought was, " As the Lord liveth before whom 
I stand." 

When the details of that great life are better 
known than they can be to most of us now, the 



280 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



thing, I think, that will strike us most will be to 
learn how his days were filled with ceaseless inter- 
ruptions. Men are spellbound even by the printed 
word of his sermons. Multitudes hung breathless 
upon his words when they were spoken. But how 
much more wonderful those sermons would seem if 
we could see the great troop that passes, not merely 
between the paragraphs, but between the sentences 
and the words of those sermons. Sometimes he 
would be called away from the same sentence four 
or five times before it could be completed. And yet, 
there was no evidence of impatience. Each one of 
those was, to him, the call of God. 

Some of us will remember, as long as we remem- 
ber anything, a great sermon that he preached from 
the words, " I am come forth from the Father, and 
am come to the world : again I leave the world, and 
go unto the Father," — and will remember his appli- 
cation of that great law of Christ's life to our lives. 
He said that should be the life of every man. Living 
with God, he should be able to come into this world 
of sorrow and sin and tumult and perplexity and trial, 
and bring some of God's Spirit to heal and comfort 
and ennoble it. And then, when the occasion for that 
service had ended, he should return again to God, 
and, in the communion with his Father, get the 
strength and the inspiration and the glory which 
again the world would need. 



THE PORTION OF THE FIRST-BORN. 281 



Indeed, that was his life. Coming into the world, 
no matter what it was that the world wished from 
him, making it the invariable rule that he would 
always speak or preach wherever and by whomsoever 
he was asked, unless that special time had been 
promised elsewhere. And then, when that occasion 
was over, returning again to that secret communion 
with his Father which kept his greatness humble and 
his power gentle. 

Surely, in some sense, you and I might take up 
that mantle. You and I may imitate that character- 
istic. We may so consecrate ourselves, soul and 
body, with just such capacity as we have, with such 
little gifts as have been granted to us, that, in the 
spirit of our master and of our friend, we may build 
up the kingdom of Israel. 

When I think of this great city that is yet to be 
built about the hills of old Boston, when I think of 
his interest in that new city, his belief in it and his 
hope for it, I ask myself, Because he is gone, shall 
his spirit not dwell here as he dwelt so long among 
the narrow streets, and, in the day of small things, 
in the lesser city ? 

It depends, my friends, upon you. You, whom he 
loved ; you, whom he so gladly served ; this Union 
which he believed in and expected great things from ; 
— it depends upon you, young men of Boston, to say 



282 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



whether or not you count yourselves worthy to stand 
as his first-born. 

Into this larger city, that is growing even while we 
speak, I ask you to take the mantle of that prophet, 
and smite the waters that divide us from the nobler, 
purer, better life ; and you will find that with that 
mantle, that with that characteristic, you too can do 
the great works that he did. For — we cannot insist 
upon it too often — it is not the greatness of the gift 
that makes the man, nor makes his power ; it is the 
faithfulness and self-consecration with which such 
gift as a man may have be used. 

When we think of the new and better Church that 
is to slowly absorb the good in all, — that will, in its 
splendid growth, lay aside the childish things which 
once occupied it, — when we think how his spirit 
rejoiced in the thought of the kingdom of God, and 
how he chafed under the limitations of all ecclesiasti- 
cism, — then again we say, Shall that spirit be a 
power in the reorganization and upbuilding of the 
kingdom of Israel ? Or shall it be only a memory, 
as the years go by ? 

It depends upon you. It depends upon you who 
have known him and loved him to say whether or 
not you will now stand as his first-born and carry 
into that nobler, better, more glorious Church the 
spirit of true catholicity, the spirit of brotherly love, 
the spirit of deep reverence, which was the glory of 
his life. 



THE PORTION OF THE FIRST-BORN. 283 



And indeed we might go on, almost without end, 
to speak of the different things in which that spirit 
mav be carried. But the one thing needful is, that 
each of us should determine to make effective in his 
own life that beauty, and purity, and meekness, and 
diligence, and reverence, and love, which was the glory 
of our friend and master. Let us no longer cry, " My 
father, my father ! " Let us rise above all personal 
grief. Let us rise above the sense of the over- 
whelming loss to the city. Let us not despair of 
Israel, but, taking up that characteristic which it is 
possible for us to lift, and claiming our place as the 
first-born, consecrating ourselves to the perpetuation 
of that spiritual property which has been bequeathed 
to us, let us cry, " Where is the Lord God of Phillips 
Brooks ? " Not, Where is he ? not, What does he 
do and think to-night ? but, Where is the God that 
he loved and served ? Where is the God that he 
made known to me ? Is His hand weakened, or His 
arm shortened, that He cannot save? 

No. Our friend and master is dead, as we say ; 
but the God whom he served is alive forevermore. 
The face that cheered us, the hand that strength- 
ened us, those are gone from us ; but the everlasting 
beauty of the Divine life, and the almighty power of 
the Divine arm, those may be ours, as they were his. 

Where is the Lord God ? That is the only ques- 
tion we have to ask ; and if we ask it, and strike the 



284 



PHILLIPS BROOKS. 



waters that divide us from the nobler and better life 
that God has prepared for them who would enter 
into it, we shall find that those waters divide for us 
as they did for him, and, entering into the new 
life, in spite of our personal loss, and great grief, 
and moments of despondency, the kingdom of Israel 
shall be built. 

This is the possibility and the glory of the first- 
born. God grant that it may be ours ! 



THE END. 



